75. A Limitless Mind: Jim Kwik’s Secrets to Unlocking Your Brain's Potential

I grew up with severe learning challenges. When I was five years old, I had a head injury and I was rushed to the hospital. My parents said before, I was very energized, very curious, very playful. But afterwards, I just shut down. Teacher came to my defense in front of the whole class and said these words, leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain. That label, you could say, became my limit.

You know, I spend so much of my time talking about bio optimization, and I have never really spent any time talking about brain optimization. And clearly that's the most important organ in the body.

Yeah. I think brain health is prerequisite for good mental health. In my book Limitless, I talk about the framework of there are three things you could always control, which I feel like limit us or can liberate us. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. A lot of people say, I'll believe it when I see it, when it could be the other way around. You can see it when you start believing it. In Limitless, I talk about limited idea entertainment. It's not true that you're not smart enough or you're too old. It's just an idea that we're giving energy to. I would say awareness, self awareness is the number one starting point for any kind of change, even for people in a health journey doing the diagnostic tests, you know, just to have some kind of baseline. Some of the most popular limiting beliefs around learning and growth and memory would be things like Ultimate Human.

Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Breca, where we go down the road of everything anti aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today's guest is a very, very special guest that you're going to get a lot from. I'm super excited to be running this podcast. We're over in London right now speaking at the same conference. So I had my team reach out to him and say, hey, can you come and spend a few minutes addressing my audience? And he agreed to do it. I've known this guest for quite some time. I've follow his work. I think that he is a thought leader in the industry and the, and the category of brain performance, accelerated learning, and memory improvement. And I spend a lot of time talking about bio optimization, but not a lot of time talking about brain optimization. So welcome to the podcast, Jim Kwik.

Thank you so much, Gary. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah, so have I. And we've. We crossed paths a few times at a Couple of other events. I think we were at Limitless in.

Yeah, we shared the stage a few times. I actually saw you a few years ago as a client. So, yeah, I remember that you helped me with.

I never disclosed that. So now that you've disclosed it.

Yeah.

But I remember. Yeah. You came to the. The. My place in Sunny Isles.

Yeah. It's gorgeous.

Thank you. And. But, you know, I. I find it fascinating that so many of my guests. I say this all the time. So many of my guests that are making such an amazing impact in the world, that have a transformative message or have a passion and a purpose that's really resonating with people, are there because they solved a problem in their life or they went through a journey, whether it was conquering addiction, whether it was overcoming something magnanimous in their relationship. And out of that came this massive purpose.

And.

And it resonated and makes an impact on humanity because the problem that they solved is something that so many people struggle with.

Yeah.

And I was really drawn to your story because your journey began very early. See, most people. I mean, most of my guests, their journey begins in adulthood. But I think your journey began when you were a very young boy. And if you don't mind, just tell. Tell my audience a little bit about that journey and how is it that you became so obsessed with learning and the brain and the cognitive abilities of humans?

You know, I believe the life we live are lessons that we teach. My inspiration really was my desperation at events like this, where we're addressing thousands of people on stage. If there's time, I'll do this demonstration where we'll pass around a microphone to 50 or 100 people, and they'll introduce themselves, and I'll memorize all their names, really, from stage, or a hundred numbers or a hundred random words and do it forwards and backwards. But I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you. I really do this to express to you what's possible. Because the truth is, every single one of your listeners, your viewers, could do that, too. We just were not taught. And I know it's a big claim. So hopefully, after this conversation, be able to give some people some techniques and some tools and some belief in that. But I know it's possible. It's just because I couldn't do that. I believe there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. For instance, there's a trained memory and an untrained memory, and we're having a conversation before we started recording on mental fitness and how important it is to be mentally fit. And part of it is we could exercise our focus, our concentration, our memory, our thinking and so much more. Yeah. I also do believe that for me, I took my mess and turned it into my message.

Turned my mess and turned it into.

My message that our struggles could be strengths. Because I grew up with severe learning challenges. Very, very severe. When I was five years old, I was in kindergarten class and I took an unfortunate fall. Some people would say it was a fortunate fall, but in hindsight I had a head injury and I was rushed to the hospital.

You hit your head on the radiator?

Yeah, it was blood everywhere. My parents said before I was very energized, very curious, very playful. But afterwards I just shut down. I became very isolated, very more stoic and just, I mean I would have these migraines every day as a five year old and I just thought it was, it was normal. They have these sensory, these balance issues. So I wasn't really good at sports. Focus, memory. I had processing issues. So teachers would repeat themselves over and over again. And then I would learn to pretend to understand, but I didn't really understand.

To avoid the social embarrassment of not grasping a subject. You would see that somebody was maybe even getting irritated having to eat something.

Or parents or somebody and I would learn to game it and just pretend. And you know, it took me three years longer to learn how to read with my brain injury as the other kids. So that was embarrassing. So a lot of self doubt. When I was nine years old, I was being teased and a little bullied because I was slower than the other kids. I wasn't understanding the lessons and teacher came to my defense in front of the whole class and said these words, said leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain. And that label, you could say became my limit. Adults have to be very careful of their external words because they often become a child's internal words. So that self talk we have inside, every single time I did badly in school, which was every week, I would say, oh, because I have the broken brain. That literally became my language to myself. When I was in pick for sports, which was all the time, I would say, oh, because I have the broken brain.

Started to identify with it Very much so, yeah.

And so, you know, I had a lot of self doubt, self confidence issues. My superpower was just shrinking because I never knew the answers. I didn't want to be called on in class. So even thinking about it, my, my shoulders were collapsed. I didn't want to take up A lot of space because I didn't want to be bullied and I didn't want to be called on. I was phobic of public speaking because I never knew the answers. So that's which is interesting. Right. Life has a sense of humor. My two biggest challenges growing up were learning and public speaking. And that's all I do. I public speak every day on this thing called learning. But it's a testament to those watching, listening. Maybe some of your struggles have become strengths that would challenge.

You need to become strengths. Yeah.

And some of the challenges led to change that adversity could be an advantage. We hear a lot about post traumatic stress. We don't hear a lot about post traumatic growth. You know, this psychological phenomenon where you come out of a situation, experience and you wouldn't wish it upon anybody, but you wouldn't change it maybe for yourself because through it you, you found something, you've got clarity or maybe a mission. You developed some kind of trait, some kind of purpose, some kind of strength that you didn't realize that you had.

Right?

Yeah. So I would say that I believe we are going back to how you started this conversation. I think we're best suited to support the person we once were. And for me it was that I want to support that person, that kid that would self doubt, distracted, you know, couldn't learn very well, had a broken brain, low self esteem, and I just want to give them hope and, and help.

And how important is it for people to, to recognize those limiting beliefs? Because I think that, you know, if I'm listening to this, you know, I'm wondering what's my limiting belief? You know, what are some of the things, internal things that I've accepted about myself that may actually be true, that are, that are, that are limiting me? You know, I, I remember hearing a story about Oprah Winfrey crediting this, this philosopher named Gary Zukoff with, with helping her lose weight. And she tried all these diets and hypnosis and all of these different things to try to try to lose weight. And, and this philosopher somehow came in and got her to lose this massive amount of weight. And when they asked Gary Zukoff, he, you know, how did you get Oprah to lose all this weight? He said, I had her stop seeing herself as a fat person. And, and he went on to talk about how smokers see themselves as smokers. And part of the addiction cycle is not seeing yourself as, as an addict. Where some of the counseling for addicts is to accept the fact that you're an addict. So it's a very interesting dichotomy, right, is do I always see myself as an addict and say I'm always going to struggle with this because I'm broken, I have a broken brain, or do I start to see myself as the non addict and addiction should never have been and will never be a part of my future. Right, so talk about a little bit about that. Like how, how do you. Because I'm fascinated by, you know, I spend so much of my time talking about bio optimization and I have never really spent any time talking about brain optimization. And, and clearly that's the most important organ in the body.

Yeah. I think brain health is, is prerequisite for good mental health. In, in my book Limitless, I talk about the framework of there are three things you could always control, which I feel like limit us or could liberate us. And so if everyone could think about. And I'll talk about the belief about identity and how it affects our performance, our mental performance. So let's turn this a little masterclass. If, if someone's listening to this, I want you to think about an area of your life where you feel limited, any area of your life, so we can make it practical and relevant, you know, to yourself. Meaning limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless for me is about advancing and progressing beyond what you're currently demonstrating or beyond what you believe is possible. Right. So what, in what area do you, are you not advancing or you feel stuck? So everybody could think about that in your finances, your impact, your happiness, your reading speed, struggling with your partnership.

Anything.

Anything, Anything. Anything where you're not making progress, you feel like you're contained in a box. That box by definition is three dimensional. Right. There are three forces that can contain that box, and these are the same three forces that will liberate you out of the box. And I call it the limitless model. So if you can imagine three forces represented by circles, three intersecting circles like a Venn diagram, the one like Mickey Mouse. Two ears on the top and one head, one face, the face are the methods. And we teach a lot of methodologies on how to read faster, how to learn languages, how to remember names and faces, how to give speeches without notes, those kind of things. But I always realized that a lot of people know what to do even when it comes to their health and wellness, but they don't do what they know. Right. Because common sense is not often common practice, you know, And I have to applaud your, your listeners because they probably know more about this subject than most of their friends and family will ever for they've probably forgotten more about the subject than most of their friends and family will ever learn. You know, and they probably get, you know, some slack for always listening to podcasts or reading these books or whatever. But, you know, but the life you live are the lessons you teach. And I always tell people, like, don't. I wouldn't take critic. Because we're so scared of what people are going to think, like maybe loved ones. And I wouldn't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from. I think that's a good. Just in general, good, good rule.

Right.

But going back to you, that's it.

That's a great one. I wouldn't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.

Yeah, because a lot of us are afraid to. I feel like life is difficult for one of two reasons. Either we're leaving our comfort zone. We're going to the unknown, we're stretching ourselves, doing something that they haven't tried before. Right. Like some of your protocols, or life is difficult because we're staying in our comfort zone. Right. And nothing is changing. Comfort zone is a nice place to visit, but nothing grows in the comfort zone. Right. And so the first two circles I just want to highlight here because ultimately, knowledge by itself is in power. It only comes power when we utilize it and implement it. Right. And so the methods are there, but what's keeping us from using the methods? The first circle is a circle that you asked about, which I think is really our mindset. So three M's. It's mindset, motivation, and methods. Those are the three dimensions that contain a box and the same three forces you could expand the box with.

And so mindset, motivation, and methods.

Yeah. So either people are stuck in that box because they don't have the methods to get out of the box. They don't know how to lose that weight or to live longer, to have more energy or better memory, read faster, or investing, whatever the methods are. But they could also be contained in that box because their mindset keeps them in that box. Three things, like what you believe is possible, what you believe you're capable of. Because people could be listening, thinking, oh, it's possible for Gary, but am I capable of it? Right.

Right.

So what you believe is possible, what you believe you're capable of, and also if we're gonna get really raw and real, what you believe you deserve. I mean, some people could be stuck in that box because they don't feel like at some level, they don't deserve to be happy or healthy or in that relation or loved or what have you or have that success. Right. And so mindset is a big deal at these events that we're, that this event we're speaking at. You know, people. Someone came to me yesterday at dinner. They're like, I'm so glad you're here. You're a memory coach. I have a horrible memory. I'm just getting too old. I'm just not that smart. And I was. I literally say the same thing every time I say stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.

Right.

If you fight for your limits, say that they're yours.

If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.

Yeah. Because I feel like our brains are this incredible supercomputer and our self talk is the program it will run. So if you tell yourself things like I'm not good at remembering names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. You know. And your mind is always eavesdropping on your self talk. And it's not to say you have one negative thought and it ruins your life any more than eating a muffin or a donut will ruin your life. 1. But if you ate that donut 30 times a day, every day, there will. Everyone will say there's a consequence.

Right.

You know, and it's really hard to create a positive life with a negative mind. So if we find yourself saying something like I don't have a great memory, even just editing it and adding a little word like yet at the end, I don't have great memory yet. It just opens up the possibilities and the potential.

Right.

But I, I really do believe that all behavior is belief driven. Meaning if you want to create a new. A new result in your life, you have to do a new behavior. In order to do that new behavior, you need a belief that says that's even possible. Right? Right. Because if you believe you can or believe you can, either way you're right. Right. Henry Ford said that years ago. Yeah, great question. So I feel like this self talk and the beliefs that people have about themselves become very much self fulfilling. Then it's not that you'll. A lot of people say I'll believe it when I see it when it could be the other way around. You know, you could see it when you start believing it. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's. It is so true that we interpret the world around us and we, we see what we're Looking for very often.

Like that red car experiment where it's like one of those things where coming here, you ask somebody if they had a red car, if they saw red cars on the street, and you're like, yeah, I'm kind of sure. Yeah. But nobody knows details. But if someone was paid, like $100 for every single. Here's a game. Here's $100 for every red car you could see, everyone's gonna be looking for those red cars, and they're gonna appear.

Everywhere they're gonna appear.

But I do believe what we're looking for, we see more of, for sure.

So how do I identify some of those limiting beliefs? You talk about this box that we're in, and if I was gonna create, close my eyes and say, I'm going to start this journey of trying to change my beliefs so I can change my outcomes, it's got to really start with this self assessment, I would imagine, of what are some of my limiting beliefs. So how do I, like, as I sit here with you today, I can't think of a limiting belief off the top of my head. But I'm sure that if I really focus, I could realize, you know, what there are.

We have. We have countless beliefs and all. And I feel like our lives are a reflection of our beliefs. Right. And so I would say in Limitless, I talk about lies, and a lie is a limited idea. Entertain. I use a lot of acronyms. Limited idea, entertain. It's not true that you're not smart enough or you're too old or what have you. It's just an idea that we're giving energy to. Right. And so I would say awareness, self awareness is the number one starting point for any kind of change. Right. Even for people, a health journey, doing the diagnostic tests, you know, just to have some kind of baseline.

Yeah.

The most. Some of the most popular limiting beliefs around learning and growth and memory would be things like genius is born. Right. Right.

We talked about this right before the podcast. That you're. That your intellect is fixed.

Yes. Like your shoe size.

Smart person. He's a smart person. Wow. He's great at math. She's.

Yeah. And it's one of those things. And the challenge with it is that you're either born with it or not born with it. Even. Even growth. Mindset psychology is saying you don't even with children, reinforce that. Oh, you're a genius. You're so smart. As opposed to reinforcing. Wow. You worked really hard at that. You know, I'm really proud of you. You put so much effort. Right. Because if somebody is saying like you're selling a child or even an adult, which is an older child, that your viewer is so smart, then when they don't achieve something, they're limited because it was, they either had it or didn't have it. As opposed to rewarding effort, perseverance, consistency. Right. And so, you know, when it comes to geniuses born, I think it's false based on my research and personal experience. You know, we have an online, the largest online academy of brain optimization accelerated learning students in 195 nations. We get a lot of feedback and it's been my experience genius is not born. It's really built through, through training, through coaching, you know, through, through athlete. Right? Yeah, exactly. And even when you look at IQ tests, it's just, it's hard to take seriously. Like a test you take when you're eight years old is the same potential you have when you're 88 years old. It does. This doesn't make any sense. Knowing what we know about the brain and neuroplasticity and we can make new connections. We get older, but we get so much wiser based on. And neuroplasticity, which is the connect our brains. A phenomenal ability to adapt. It thrives on two things, novelty and nutrition. Just like your body, right. If you want to grow muscle, you go to the gym, give it novelty, you work it out and then you feed it your amazing nutrients to be able to.

Yeah. And you talk about neuronutrition and your top 10 foods for brain health, which I'm definitely going to draw out of you on this podcast. But you know, and, and it was very refreshing for me to see that because I talk about basic nutrition for human optimization, you know, and, and I don't have a dogma around a specific diet. I'm not keto, paleo, carnivore, you know, raw food, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian. I think that those set people up for failure. I, I believe in a whole food diet, meaning that we should be eating whole foods. And if you look at the research in blue zones that really supports that there wasn't one specific diet that stood out. It wasn't like only the meat eaters lived the longest, only the fish eaters lived the longest, only the vegans lived the longest. There was a actually pretty vast amount of discontinuity in, in their diet. Some were high carbohydrates, some were high meat, some were high fish and oil, some were actually high in dairy and wine.

Right.

The French were really defying the odds, you know.

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But you talk about neuro nutrition and I think it's really important because there are foods that are really great for your brain and you gave a list of the top 10. I think I've memorized six of them.

But I could teach you how to do.

Okay, yes, clearly I need to take your course because I watched your podcast and didn't retain it.

Yeah, so. So there is chapter two chapters in limitless on on brain nutrition, neuro nutrition that your brain is only 2% of your body mass, but it requires approximately 20% of the oxygen of the nutrients. It's an energy hog. Right. Your your brain and it burns a lot of calories and needs to be fortified and so there are certain foods. And now I'll stipulate this with I believe everyone. I have a similar approach as you do. I don't have dogma around. I feel like everyone's bio individual. And just like how there's personalized medicine based on a DNA test or personalized nutrition based around a nutrient profile or microbiome test or a slew of other tests. You know, we've also created a personalized performance learning based on an assessment which we could talk about a little bit later in terms of brain type. Definitely brain types. Like there are four main brain types and once you know your brain type, you kind of know your kind of like love languages. Like when you really thrive based on your thinking patterns.

Wow.

And it explains your family, your friends. But to go to nutrition, what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. Right, that just kind of makes sense. And, and what I would say is I always prefer people get things from food personally. And again, some people could be allergic to some of these foods. So, you know, talk to your nutritionist and your qualified, you know, practitioner. Some of my favorite brain foods. Avocados, Monounsaturated fat. I won't go into all the details here. I think a lot of people know this. Blueberries, I like to call them brain berries.

Two for two so far.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Broccoli. It could be good for. And again, everyone has different preferences. One of the ingredients also is sulforaphane, which is good for cognitive health and performance. Olive oil. High quality olive oil. Good for the brain. Eggs. If your diet allows the choline in eggs, we're curious to do acetylcholine, which is important for cognitive health. A few more green leafy vegetables like kale and spinach and you got to get your Omega 3, your DHAs. Some people get it from flax, I get it from salmon. Sardines.

Yep.

Turmeric.

Turmeric.

The active ingredient is curcumin. Could lower the systemic inflammation. Walnuts is a great thing to snack on. High vitamin E, neuroprotective and probably everyone's favorite. Dark chocolate. Generally, what's good for.

But there's a percentage of dark chocolate, right? It's like 70% or higher.

What's the number? It, it, it is high, you know, and low in sugar. Not milk chocolate. But generally what's good for your mood is going to be good for your mind. They're polyphenols and, and just makes you feel good. The. So here, let me just show people a real quick trick to memorize this list. There's a, the largest chapter in Limitless is a chapter on memory improvement. I wrote it in Greece. I found out there's a goddess of memory, which I thought was really interesting. And her children are the nine muses of science, literature and art. So the mother of science, literature and art is memory.

Wow.

And they had some of the most incredible tools and mental tactics for memorizing things before printing presses. Like, I was always curious. While my work is, you know, based on neuroscience, adult learning theory, you know, the modern research on how to on brain performance. Also, I'm always curious about ancient wisdom. Right?

Yeah.

And what did people do before they had this technology, printing presses and computers and everything to memorize? And there's a 2,500 year old memory technique where orders in Greece would memorize their speeches and poetry using a memory palace and a memory palace.

Memory palace?

Yeah, a memory palace is an area that you're familiar with, maybe your home, your office. People could use the mall, their school. And we realize that human beings remember where things are. Like think about it thousands of years ago as Hunter got through, we didn't need to memorize formulas or numbers or things. Like we need to memorize where things were, where's the food, where's the good soil, where's the clean water, where's the enemy tribe? I mean, that was our survival, right? And so we remember things in space. So the idea here with the memory palace is you take spaces you're very familiar with, like your home, and you put the information, you imagine the information you want to remember around a journey in those places. So in this case, we could use our body. Right? So I challenge everybody to do this because don't just hear it and you'll impress yourself. I'll teach you how to memorize those foods forwards and backwards in just a couple minutes. It takes more time to explain it than it is to do it. And I just remember PI remembering as easy as pie. And pie is not a brain food.

Okay?

I use a lot of acronyms.

Damn it. I just put that one on the counter. Take it off.

So it's an acronym? Yeah. The P is place, The I is imagine. The E is entwine. So you need a place to store information. You need. I, you need to imagine. We tend to remember things better when we can imagine. It's either see it or feel it or hear it. And then the E is entwine, which is connect the place and the image. And I'll show everyone exactly what I mean. So imagine 10 places in our body. So I want everyone to say this, do this, feel this, take your hand, put it on top of your head and say top, top, top. All right, so that's your verbal memory. Or name 10 places, top to bottom. Go right down. Two is nose.

Nose.

Nose. Everyone's touching your nose if you're just listening to this and saying it. Down. Three is mouth.

Mouth.

Good. And audience also listen. Four are ears. Say it out loud. Ears. Ears.

Yep.

Five is throat. Throat. Okay, so we're halfway there. And this is kind of remember our brain is an organ, but it acts like more like a muscle. And it's use it or lose it. And if I put my arm in a sling for or cast for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger, right? It wouldn't stay the same, it would atrophy. Same thing with our mental muscles. And so this is a way of exercising our mental muscles. So number six are your shoulders. So number, what's number six?

Shoulders. Yeah.

And seven is your collar. So what is seven? Eight. Wiggle your fingers. Fingers. Nine is your belly. Everyone touch your belly. And ten is your bottom.

Ten is your bottom.

All right, so that's one through ten, ten places. So it's. So that's the first part of the memory palace. You need places that you remember. So we took our body and now the second part is taking the information you want to remember, in this case the brain foods, and turn them into an image and entwining it with the place. All right, And I'm going to ask everybody to do this as if you're like 10 years old. Just have fun with it. Be as creative, add emotion. The key, one of the keys to a better long term memory is, is information by itself is forgettable. But information combined with emotion becomes unforgettable. I mean, you think about your middle brain, we don't have to do the whole brain anatomy, but that seahorse looking thing is your hippocampus, right? Function, primarily memory. Connected to it is an almond shaped part of your brain called your amygdala. It's kind of like a switching station. It's kind of like a switching station for emotion. But notice memory and emotions are so closely linked. And people could know this because you hear a song, it could take you back to when you're a teenager, or food or fragrance could take you back to when you're a child. So information by itself forgettable, but information combined with emotion becomes more unforgettable. So in this exercise, I'm going to ask you to imagine it and just add some emotion. Make it a little funny, humorous, sexy, whatever you want, gross or whatever. Just to make it a little bit more impactful. So the first place on our body was what? The top?

The top.

And I want you to imagine there the first brain food, which are avocados. So just imagine avocados. And you know you can make guacamole using it as a scalp conditioner, right? And if it makes you laugh, Gary, you're not gonna forget it. If you went out on the streets here, saw somebody with guacamole in there, you would just remember that. You wouldn't have to study it for an hour. You wouldn't have to repeat it a hundred times. This is how people memorize things. They study it for a long Time, it's always right. It's always like the variables in physics are always frequency, duration, and intensity. Just like if you want to build your body, you could give it frequency, you could do lots of reps, or duration. If you want to build your body, you give it novelty, you give frequency, you could do lots of reps, or you could spend more time duration on the treadmill, or intensity, you could use more intensity and get similar results.

And.

And the great thing about intensity doesn't take as frequency and duration take time. So just like marketing or advertising or sales, you could have frequent ads. Right? Right. You could have a longer presentation or a longer sales video or longer infomercial. Right. Duration. Or you could have something that's so intense, it just touches people, you know, their emotional state, and they just have to buy. Right. And so I always wanted for accelerated learning. Frequency repeating something over and over again takes time. Studying longer takes time duration. If you can make it more intense by seeing it, feeling it, visualizing it, you're more likely to understand it and retain it. So again, guacamole all over the scalp. It reminds you of avocados. And okay, the second place on your body was what?

The nose.

The nose and the second brain food are blueberries. So I want everyone just to imagine blueberries coming out of your nose, feel the smell, the blueberries, like they're ripe blueberries. They feel it inside your nose. I call them brain berries. I see it, feel it, smell it. Amazing. All right. From there, the third place is our mouth. And the third brain food was broccoli. So when everyone just imagined tasting broccoli, maybe it's stuck in your teeth. Yeah, but just exaggerate it. Because when you exaggerate it, you're taking something ordinary, making it more extraordinary inside as you represent in your mind. So lots of broccoli stuck in your teeth.

Lots of broccoli stuck in your teeth.

And you're embarrassed about it.

Blueberries coming up.

Perfect.

Lots of avocados in the air.

And then the fourth one place are your ears. And the fourth brain food, olive oil. So I want everyone to imagine you're cleaning your ears with olive oil. It's very serious. Very, very simple. Right. Number five is your throat. And the fifth brain food were eggs. So instead of an Adam's apple, I want everyone to imagine there's a. There's an egg, you know, however you like your eggs. They're just right in your throat. You can feel it. It's there, see it. Even if you can't imagine it, imagine you can imagine it. All right, so the eggs on your throat. All right, we're halfway there. Number six are your shoulders. And that was green leafy vegetables. So for me, I just think of shoulder pads made of kale and spinach. Gotcha. Kale and spinach. You're just imagining it there. Kale and spinach. See? And feel it. Good. Number seven was your collar and salmon. So I want everyone to imagine. Imagine a necklace made out of salmon sushi.

I actually just have a fish necklace hanging there.

Perfect.

Salmon fish necklace.

And make this salmon really gross. Yeah. For me, I have salmon sushi and necklace. But just imagine it's also. You want to make a Margaret. Like, imagine it's a week old. Oh, yeah. Okay. So that way you got it. You'll never forget that.

Yeah.

All right. Eighth is your fingers. And that the eighth brain food was turmeric. So really easy. That golden powder all over your fingers, you can't wash it off. It's in your nail bed. Turmeric. Good. Nine. Ninth place on your body was your belly. The ninth brain food were walnuts. So imagine you're eating walnuts out of your belly button or you're in the park. Imagine somebody eating walnuts out of their butt. You would never forget that. You would. Even 20 years from now, you'll still remember that. Right. And that's how dude eating walnuts out his belly button. Exactly. Because when you understand how your memory works, you could work your memory. Right?

Yeah.

So walnuts and they kind of look like a brain just to remind you of the brain benefits. And then finally, 10 on your body is what your bottom. And that was dark chocolate. I don't want to know what anyone's thinking, but dark chocolate on your bottom. Dark chocolate on the bottom. Just imagine it.

Dark chocolate on your bottom.

All right, so to the listener or the viewer, I want you to imagine you're driving and you get a call from. From Gary and you say, hey, tonight after the event, we're going to have, like, a brain healthy, you know, party. Can you stop by the market and pick up these 10 things? And you're like, I'm driving. I can't write it down, but that you put it on your body. Right. And you go to the market, you're walking around the aisles, and you don't need. You don't need a shopping list. You know, usually people to make their shopping list and triplicates to remember everything, you don't need that because have you gone to the store to buy one thing and you come back with like two bags full of things. Except for that one thing that you went there for. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

This will help that person. So now you're walking around the supermarket, the grocery store, the farmer's market, whatever, and you remember what you need to buy for this limitless brain party. The first thing is on, you have your list right on you. On top of your head you have what, the avocados? The avocados. And then your nose. Everybody. And people could pause. People could pause this and also just write them down. Also post it online. Tag Gary and me, see how many you remember.

Yeah, I love this.

Yeah. Number three out of your mouth was the broccoli. Yeah, broccoli. And then stuck in there, you're cleaning your ears with that olive oil. And then in your throat or your neck area, you have hard boiled eggs.

Eggs, yeah.

And then that's five, six are your shoulders. You have shoulder pads made out of spinach. Yeah. Green leafy vegetables. Green leafy vegetables. Your collar, you have a necklace that is made out of salmon. Good.

And yours is called Mine. Mine was fresh cut.

Eight is your fingers. What's on your fingers? You have all that turmeric. Yeah, the golden powder. Turmeric. Number nine is your belly. What's coming out of your belly button?

The walnuts.

The walnuts. And your bottom is the dark chocolate.

Wow.

So I just want to remind you, work.

The funniest thing is my cameraman's doing it offline.

I love that. And then the idea here is, you know, if you did well, better than people did, you know, you would imagine you did the first time, you know, and practice makes progress. But imagine it took more time to explain how to do it than to actually do it. Right.

Right.

When to see a picture, it's very, very quick. It's worth a thousand words. And I imagine a lot of people could do it backwards. You know, I imagine a lot of people could go from bottom, you know, dark chocolate. Right. You know, to their belly button, which they have their walnuts. Their walnuts. And their fingers there's covered in all the way back up to the top of your head. And I imagine you could even test yourself a week later and you'll remember most, if not all of them again after one trial. And if you could do that with food, what else can you apply that towards? Names and faces, client information, product information, languages, whatever suits you.

So when you're actually addressing an audience and you're doing this memory trick, for example, and you have 50 people stand up and say their name.

Yeah.

You're not remembering 50 people's names because you're placing them around your body.

No, different. Different. Different technique. And it's similar. Like when people come to me. I know you work with a lot of athletes.

Yes.

If people come to me and say, like, I want to have a better memory, that's like somebody coming to me as a coach saying, I want to be better at sports. Like, what sport specifically? Right. And you could customize tools and techniques, systems around that sport to really maximize their effectiveness. Same thing with memory. You know, use a different technique for remembering lists and speeches than remembering names. You know, certain principles are the same to remember names. Just a few things to think about. Everybody first, remember mom? You know, it's kind of. I mentioned the mother of memory. Remember Mom? I use a lot of acronyms as shortcuts so everyone will remember it. Well, here, let me ask you. Most people are trouble remembering names, right? Right.

Yeah, most.

Now, is it important? You know, I think it is in business, in life, because how are you gonna show somebody you're gonna care for their future, their health, their finances, whatever you have to offer them if you don't care enough just to remember their name? Right. Cause people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And if you don't. If you don't. If you forget someone's name consistently, you're saying you don't care, they're not important. And then it doesn't matter what you say after that. Right. Because it's already framed that way. So I would say nobody remembers all names, but nobody forgets all names. And I have a belief that genius leaves clues that if somebody is really good at something or they exhibit some kind of result, they're doing something. There's a method behind what looks like magic. Right. The remarkable work you have with clients, it could look like magic from somebody who doesn't know, but they're following a method, right?

That's very true.

You know, just like a magician, it looks like magic, but there's a methodology. And so I would say there's a method behind your memory also, as well, that there's no magic pill, but there's a process. And so I would say one of those things, if you don't forget all names, you remember some names, there's some. There's quality to those people that as a through line or a thread. And I think one of them is you're motivated. So the first M in MOM is motivation, because you don't remember all names, but you Tend to remember the names, you're motivated, that could be a good client or you're attracted to that. There's some kind of inherent feeling. Right?

Right.

And so I would say for the first thing to remember names, touch and connect with that purpose. Because reasons reap results. If you don't have a reason to remember something, what you read, you know, who you're meeting, a conversation, you're not going to remember it, right? And even asking yourself, why do I want to remember this person's name? Maybe it's to make some how, show the person some respect, get a referral, do a sale, practice, at the very least, practice these things I learned on this podcast, you know, cause which again that Jim Rohn quote, what you practice in private, you're rewarded for in public, right? For all the work that you've done, for the decades of experience that you had in your studies, you know, especially with data like, like, you know, all that practice leads to, like the public, you know, changes and the public, you know, success, you know, that you have with clients. So I would say first thing, m tap in your motivation. Ask yourself why. The O in mom is observation. Yeah, The O in remembering someone's names is observation, meaning. A lot of people, when they forget something, Gary, they blame their retention. And it's not so much your retention, it's your attention. A lot of people aren't forgetting, they're just not hearing it right. Because, and especially when it comes to names and faces, because usually they're not listening, they're in their own head. They're thinking about what they're going to say, how they're going to respond, right? So they're not even listening for the name. And so I would say if even as a mental experiment, like imagine the word listen inside your mind's eye and then as a brain exercise scramble, the letters, it spells another word perfectly, it spells word silent. And so like your brain is, I mean, think about it, 86 billion neurons, right? Up upwards of 10,000 synaptic connections per neuron. I mean, there's more potential connections than there are stars in the universe, right? You have the most number. You have the number one most complicated, you know, wealth building device on the planet between your ears that you're born with. But your brain doesn't come with an owner's manual and it's not user friendly, right? So that, that's why we work limitless to be an owner's manual for a brain, a functional one, practical, pragmatic, to get results. And when you understand your brain works. You can work your brain, but here's the thing with observation to remember someone's name.

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You're focusing on a name, but you don't have focus. You do it. A big principle, what we teach is taking the nouns in our lives and turn them into verbs meaning you hear. So I feel like sometimes our going back to mindset our lives are limited because media, we're being hypnotized. Media marketing, whatever is telling us we're broken, we're not enough and whatever. Right. Fear everything for control. And also there's. It's not just external, it's internal. We sometimes we're self. We're hypnotizing ourselves self hypnosis by saying, you know, I'm not focused, I don't have energy, I don't have the smarts, I don't have a good memory. These are not things you have, they're things you do. You don't have energy, you do them. So I find like a commonality between our work is like we want to help people to transcend. Look, look at the word transcend. Transcend. End the trance. This hypnosis, you know that this is the reality. Like this matrix is the reality that we're supposed to be just sick and tired, you know, and not be low energy and struggle in these kind of areas. And so I would say same thing with our transcending our self talk. You don't have energy, you generate energy. You don't have a memory. There's a process for remembering. You don't have focus. There's a process for focusing. You don't have motivation. There's a three step process for motivating yourself. So I bring this up because it gives you your agency back, you know, because you dominion. Yeah because it turns into an action. As opposed to I wake up and I hope I have creativity to write today or to make videos today. Right. As a. Because hope is not a strategy. As opposed to saying, oh, I don't have creativity, I could. There's a process for creating, there's a process for remembering, there's a process for studying. Right. And so going back to focus, you know, have focus. There's a process for focusing. And focus also is a muscle and it's use it or lose it. But most people in the brain.

You mean it's a muscle.

It is, it is the application of focus is a muscle. Meaning. The problem is a lot of people wake up in the morning, they flex their distraction muscles. Right. You pick up your phone, every ring, ping, ding. App notification, social media alert is driving this dopamine flood. It drives you to distraction and you flex your distraction muscles and then you wonder why you can't focus at work or with your kids or at a meeting or anything else like that. So it could be a big challenge, you know, as opposed to, you know, the other thing about picking up your phone first thing in the morning. We have a video on Facebook, has like 37 million views. I did output 10 years ago saying you wire your brain for distraction and you wire your brain for reaction. When you wake up in the morning, your brain is incredibly relaxed.

Distraction and reaction.

Yeah. When you wake up in the morning, think about it, it's most relaxed your nervous system is probably going to be throughout the day. You're very suggestible. If the first thing you do is pick up your device, you wire your brain for distraction. Right. Every like share comment, cat video is just driving you just not to be able to focus every scroll, doom scrolling. And it's also wiring your brain for reaction, which is also as detrimental to your life. Meaning it puts you on the defense how you build an awesome day if you're just fighting fires, responding to every message, voicemail, social media message, email, that could hijack your mood.

Yeah. Just trying to put content out there.

Yeah. And I'm not saying that it's. Some people can't. Don't have to, you know, touch their phone and do that. I'm just saying to the best of our ability. Like when there's a quote in Limitless that says life is a letter, C between B and D. Life is C between B and D where B is birth, D is death, life, C Choice.

Yeah.

Right. And I do believe our these difficult times, they could distract you. These difficult times, they could, you know, diminish you or these difficult times, they could develop you.

Right.

We ultimately decide with our choices. You know, like our lives are the sum total of all the choices we made up to this point your day, like what you're going to consume mentally, what you're going to read, watch, who are you going to spend time with, what you're going to feed, what you're going to eat. You know, all those things.

And how important is it for us to be conscious about filtering our environment so that, you know, we, you know, I often talk about filtering things before they get to the temple.

Right.

Because I, I and I always refer to our bodies as the temple because I want people to treat it like a temple.

Yeah.

And I say, you know, when you're looking at food, if you look at food two ways. It can either serve me or it can steal from me.

Right.

And the thieves are usually the ones that are the best dressed. You know, they're like the, they're, they're the desserts that look the best. And you know, but you're going to let them into the temple and they're going to, they're going to rob you. And it's okay to do, just know what that consequences you mean. Certain foods are going to have a drain on your energy. You can eat them, but you'll have the consequence, certain foods are going to serve you and you'll have the positive consequence of that. All of the foods that you just talk about would be foods I would also recommend. So if we're developing a filter for our mind, you know, what sort of things can we learn to filter in our environment that are distracting us? Like for example, if you don't mind me saying, you know, yesterday during the big dinner that we were at, we, I actually stepped into an empty room and I was to, to take a phone call and a few minutes later you came in and, and you said there were just too many distractions.

Yeah.

And I wasn't supposed to see you in there. You know, we ran into each other by action. So you are practicing something. You are regularly conscious that you're in a situation where either you felt overwhelmed or you were unconsciously or you know, being bombarded. And so you consciously removed yourself from that situation. So tell me, tell me about that.

I feel like we always have two choices. We, we either change the external world. If we have a level of dissonance, discomfort, then I feel like feelings, emotions are a signal to action. Right. If you feel fearful of public speaking or whatever presentation you have to give at school or work, that fear Is a signal to action that maybe you have to prepare. Right. So I think emotions are very valuable. I was feeling a little bit overwhelmed because I had some stuff going on and there was like 200 people. There's a lot of noise and a lot of everything and a lot of people wanting to say hello, which is great. And I needed a little brain break. So the two choices we always have, we could control the environment, we could do something external, or we could do something internal. Right. So I chose to do something external, which is remove myself for five minutes just to get a little reprieve, Disconnect, to reconnect. Right. Or if I didn't do that, I would have to make a change internally and just reframe it in my mind and saying, well, focus on what's great. Control the questions that I have in terms of harnessing my attention to one person. Just thinking about great gratitude about how many people are going to benefit from learning at this conference.

Yes.

Right. So there's always something external or internal. And so like, so the. I just want to. Because people are the owls. And I'll talk about brain types in a moment. There's four different brain animals.

Yeah. I want to get into the four.

But they're going to want to know what the last M is. And mom is our methods for remembering names. So you need motivation, observation and methodology. And for this methodology, remember names. I did a process of. That's in the book where I say the name, I use it. I could ask about a name, visualize a name, and end with the name. And that's something called suave. So when you're meeting somebody at the next event, you want to remember names. Suave. Say it, say the name because you get to hear it again. Use the name three or four times in the conversation. The A is asking. Especially when you meet people with unusual names. You could ask, well, you know, who are you named after? You know, what is, how do you spell it? What does it mean? Where's it from? Everyone's favorite subject is themselves. So it's wonderful to do. The V is visualize. And visualize means if somebody's name is Mark for a split second, imagine you're putting a check mark on their forehead. Person's name is Mary. Imagine they're getting married, right? Because imagine Einstein said, imagination is more powerful than knowledge. And these are memory aids. It's to overcome what I call the six second syndrome. You hear something like a name, you have six seconds to do something with that name. Otherwise it's gone. Right? And this, what this focuses you on if you tend to remember what you see. Like, a lot of people are much better, Gary, with faces than they are with names.

Right.

You go to someone, say, I remember, for example. Yeah, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. And you never go to someone and say the opposite. And you never go to someone and say, I remember your name and I forgot your face. Don't even make any sense.

I know your name is Bob, but I have no idea who you are.

And that's the only recognize. That's the other trick that happened. The other somebody told me they're like, they. They are like they asked the person, they forgot the name. They came with something clever like, oh, yeah, by the way, how do you spell your name? The name that they should know. And the guy was like, B, O, B. So it didn't really. Didn't really play out very well. But we come up with all these strategies.

Yeah, it needs to be like Fernando or something like that.

It was a Seinfeld episode, I think.

Oh, was it?

That sounds like Gary was. Sorry, sorry. Jerry was dating somebody, was intimate with her, didn't know her name. And every time she went to the bathroom, he would try to go through her purse to find her id, you know, George, you know, and Costanza, they would come in and try to introduce themselves, try to get the name. I think it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy.

Okay.

Anyway. But it's a common. If it's on Seinfeld, it's cool. A common occurrence. People forget names, but the method is visualized. So you could take someone's name and turn into a picture something that sounds like it or reminds you of it, you know, so if it's Jim, and maybe you just imagine lifting weights. If first name is Mike, singing on a microphone, something silly like that.

And this is. This is when you're going through those 50 people, because they keep coming back to this in the audience. This is kind of what you're doing.

And I have. And if you want to, people could be very intelligent about this because you could go to your guy. I know you have international audience. You could go online to your census bureau for your country, in our case, the US and look up the top hundred male names and female names and then come up with a picture for those 200 people and just go through Carol. Christmas carols. David. I use a slingshot like David and Goliath. Right. And the idea here, it takes a little bit of time and energy. That's the bad news. But the Good news is not as much as you think. So it's like I'm really good at remembering names, but I never got better after 30, 60 days of practice. And this is like decades ago because once you know how to do something, you know how to drive a car, you know how to type, you know how to like tie your shoes, it becomes a skill, right? And so if you wanted people want to be smart about it, they could take the top hundred names just like we teach a language learning, take the most used phrases and then focus on those. Right? Because that get 80, 20 rule, right? The 20% that gives you 80% results. If you do that for the hundred male names in the US A picture for each of the like Bob apples. Bob me for apples. Right. It's very that simple. Then you have a picture for 6 out of 10 males automatically preset. If you do that for female names in the US top 100, it's about 40%. So it's like half the job is done. You have a picture and all you do is take that picture and put it on the person. And then by the way, you keep this in the privacy of your own mind. You're not telling Bob or David of what you're doing to their, you know, the slingshot to their nose. But it adds that emotion. It sees it. Because there's a Chinese proverb that says what I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember what I do, I understand what I hear, I forget. I heard the name, I forgot it. What I see, I remember. I saw the face, I remember the face. What I do. Going back to practice, you really understand. Because I feel like people don't know it unless they could do it. You know, you could read books on push ups, but if you're not or anything. But if you're not, you can't do it and you're not doing, you're not going to get the benefit. So V is visualize. And then finally the E and swab is end. You end the conversation saying their name. Right? Okay, you say goodbye. Goodbye, Max, it's really good to see you. Right. Or it's wonderful meeting you. Call Gary, it's have a great day.

Right?

And then it just. Because if you could walk into a room and meet 20 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one of them by name, who are they all going to remember? You. Right. And that, that's a standout skill. Now going back to environment and then we'll get the brain types and some of the more nutrition. I realized that environment is Very, very important to master your environment. It's one of the 10 things that we teach. So the things that we teach in Limitless in our podcasts and our courses are the software. This is how to read three times faster with better understanding and better retention, better focus. This is how to learn languages. I teach a lot of actors how to memorize their scripts, their lines, TED speakers, how to memorize their speeches and stuff like that. So that's all the processes, that's the software, the hardware you have to take care of, which is a three pound matter between your ears, right? Because you could have all this but be deficient in sleep or deficient in vitamin D or deficient in, you know, or more stress and you're, you're. The software is not going to be able to have as maximum optimal benefits. Right? So what I realized very, very quickly is so about Limitless is heavily endorsed by like the Cleveland Clinic center for Brain Health, founding director there by one of the top Alzheimer's researchers out of Harvard, Dr. Rudy Tanzi. And we know when I speak at these institutions that about one third of our brain's potentiality is determined by genetics and biology. And two thirds is in our control and our influence. Now, some people would say with epigenetics we have 100% influence, right? But we have more influence than we think. And so there are 10 levers that I found science based that will help you access more of that 2/3. So you have good hardware. So I'll go through them really quick. And what I want people to do is keep this interactive because you won't learn unless you're doing it, is just to rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10, how much energy and effort attention in the past seven days did you put towards these 10 things? Right? Because then you'll see that there's no magic pill. But anything that's lower than a three or four or five like, you might want to put attention to, right? Because. And it'll be self evident and I'll go through them very, very fast. All right, so 10 keys for a limitless brain to take care of. You have the best optimized brain and these are all common sen. But it's not common practice. So number one, we talked about good brain diet, right? What you eat matter, especially your gray matter. And most people, I think, still remember the brain foods.

Yeah, I know I do.

And then post it online.

Avocado all the way down the chocolate.

Exactly. Post it online if you remember it. Teach somebody else if you want to learn something. Faster. Teach your kids, teachers, your significant other, teach your team. Because when you teach it, you get to learn it twice. It's called the explanation effect. When you explain it to somebody else, you're gonna learn it better. And it's a fun thing to teach some people. So scale of 0 to 10, because what would give you a lower score, all the things that you talk about, right? The high sugar, food, high processed food, high chemicals, all of that will give you a lower score. All right. The second key to a better brain is killing ants. Now it's clinically proven to be good for your brain. ANTS stands for automatic negative thoughts. All right, so that goes back to the mindset we talked about that our thoughts that your mind is always eavesdropping on your self talk, right? And so how empowering and encouraging. I'm not saying being so positive because some people are so optimistic, they don't go to the and get diagnostic tests and they think it's just going to get better and everything. So I'm not saying be, be toxic positive. I'm saying like how encouraging are your thoughts to, to potentiality and a new reality that you're striving for? So on a scale of 0 to 10, killing ants are automatic negative thoughts. If you think you can, think you can. Either way you're right. And just edit it. Remember I said like if you feel you say I'm a great memory, just add a little word like yet. Or people find themselves saying just, just this morning I was with somebody and they were like, oh man, I gotta pick up the kids today. I can't meet today, I gotta work out, I gotta meditate, I gotta whatever, right? And I was just like what if you change the word? Got to get. I get to pick up my kids today. Well, I get, I get to move my body today. I get to journal or do whatever it happens. I get to eat right today, right? It just changes things. You know, one letter, you change it O and God to E and get. And it just, it just feel it lands different, right?

Yes.

So zero to ten past seven days. How encouraging have your thoughts been? Number three. Third key to a limitless brain is exercise, right? And you know a ton about this subject especially for your brain, right? When you exercise, you create brain derived neurotropic factors, bdnf which is like fertilizer for neuroplasticity for your brain. When you exercise, you get dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, changes your mood, your cognitive health. You exercise, you have more blood flow, right? And you get oxygen, more oxygen, you lower stress. So many benefits to exercise. And I don't mean just working out, you know, three, four, five times a week. I'm talking about how much you're moving throughout the day.

Agreed.

The number one reason you have a brain is to control your movement. You see this in children. They have to move and crawl in order to have brain development. Right. But as your body, as your body moves, your brain grooves. Literally. There's in studies where people are listening to a podcast and this audio or audiobook or whatever, and they're doing something rhythmic, maybe on a treadmill or going for a brisk walk, they're gonna, they're gonna retain, understand more of that information. Right? Right. So as your body moves, your brain grooves. And the thing is, they say sitting is a new smoking. We're sitting behind screens all day. And so I just recommend everyone take a brain break to do, you know, you know, every hour, whatever. You use the pomodoro technique, if you're familiar with it, but just take a five minute break even to what do three things. Breathe. Because a lot of times when people are working, if you look at their posture, they're slumped or when they're reading, they fall asleep. And because their postures, the lower one third of your lungs absorbs two thirds of the oxygen. And a lot of people get tired not because they are lacking calories, it's just because they're not getting enough oxygen to their brain. I agree. Right. So you could use that time to do some breathing exercises. Hydrate. Right. I'm drinking amazing hydrogen water. Because your brain is, you know, whatever, 75, whatever percent water we have on our, we were talking on our podcast like with a neuroscientist, a nutritionist who's saying like, if even a 2%, if you're 2% dehydrated could affect your cognitive health, your cognitive performance and staying hydrated could boost your reaction time, your thinking speed, upwards of 30%. Right. So you get, a lot of times people are so busy working, they don't hydrate. So brain break. You breathe, you hydrate. And the third thing, Move. Absolutely, absolutely move. And if it's just getting some sun, some vitamin D, playing with your dogs outside. So on scale 0 to 10, how much are you moving throughout the day? Right. Number four are brain nutrients. And so different than brain foods. And I always prefer you get your nutrients from food. That's my personal. But again, who's eating the perfect diet?

Right.

All the time in the soil.

Travel.

Travel and stress and everything. And so you might want to. So for example, if you're not getting the omega, if you're not getting your salmon, sardines, whatever, maybe you're supplementing with your D. Your fish oil. Yes. If you're not getting curcumin, like if you're not getting the turmeric, maybe supplement with the active ingredient curcumin, or you're not getting the eggs, maybe supplementing with choline or whatever. Right. That's for cognitive health. In Limitless, we have a chapter on neuro nutrition, specifically on nootropics. And I don't know if you talk about that a lot in your work.

Not a lot. I love the. I'm fascinated by nootropics.

So I want to differentiate between cognitive health and cognitive performance. So I think important for cognitive health is. Yes, you get your vitamin D, your B vitamins, your complex. Yes, Exactly. Your omega 3 DHAs. You know, you get a baseline vitamin, mineral. That's cognitive health, cognitive performance. I'm looking at the area of nootropics and nootropics where these are substances that have been shown that research shows can improve and enhance performance.

Wow.

Executive functioning, focus, memory, mood, mental vitality and energy.

And what are some of your favorites in that category?

So we put 30 in the book with all of them with human studies. So we reference all the human studies. Some. Okay, so creatine. Right. This is something you.

I take it every day.

Yeah, it's one of the most researched substances out there. I originally started it because my supplement, my workout routine years ago. But also there's so much research talking about the cognitive benefits to your mitochondria to offset some of the. Some bad sleep that we have. All this research.

Yeah, you talk about sleep being a superpower too.

Absolutely. That's one of those that. Yeah, we're going to get to that stuff. Definitely one of the.

Detoxify.

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely one of the 10. So creatine, one of them. Lion's mane.

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Mushrooms. Some of my favorite ones that are not as well known. Bacopa. Bacopa is an herb that's used in ayurvedic medicine has been shown, studies suggest support memory. Alpena galanga is an herb also in ayurvedic medicine also. But research shows that it helps a lot with energy. It doesn't have any caffeine but really good for mental energy. One that a lot of people are hearing more about. Ashwagandha, right. To be able to help resilience, mental stress, the calm without the jitters. So that can be very powerful. There is another little known one. There's a coffee fruit extract. So this is the byproduct of coffee, coffee fruit extract. Where it has no caffeine, it's usually discarded in the coffee making process. But it has strong antioxidant effects and could potentially support the creation of bdnf brain derived neurotropic factors. And then phosphatidylserine is another one that's been shown to be able to serine. Hospital title Serine. Yeah. Support memory also as well. So, so we put all of, we put 30 of them roughly in the book. I could give people a free list so they don't have to buy the book.

Well no, I'm going to put the link to the book on the, on, on the show notes because first of all you give the proceeds to charity.

We do. So people can get the full list at if it's okay. Brainnutrition.com and it's all the links to the studies and everything that's there, all the research and what it is, the book. Yes, we donate all the proceeds. We built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya. Supported Alzheimer's research for women. I lost my grandmother. So when I was going through my learning difficulties, you know, I lost my grandmother who was taking care of me of Alzheimer's when I was seven. So Alzheimer's women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. So I believe you learn to earn, to return. So anyone who supported a book, thank you. We did over a million copies the first couple years sold.

Wow, congratulations.

But yeah, we just want to be able to get that out to the world. But yeah, going back to neuronutrition, four is neuronutrition, you rate yourself. And then very quickly the last six, five. The fifth key to a better brain is a positive peer group. Positive, pure. And you know this, who you spend time with is who you become having a community. The large study on happiness, the longest study on happiness at Harvard shows it wasn't so much, you know, diet and exercise was contributing factors to longevity and happiness. But it was Also your community.

Community.

Yeah, exactly. You talk about how, how cells are part of a community and human beings are a part of community.

Yeah.

So it's not just our neurological networks, it's our social networks. Right. Because who we spend time with is who become. We have these mirror neurons. One of the science based reasons is, is we have mirror neurons where we're constantly imitating the people around us. Over time, we're conditioned. We mirror their words, their actions, their thoughts, their character, their habits. Right. Whether or not you smoke has less to do with your biological networks and more your social network. If your friends, friends smoke, you're more likely to smoke. Right. If all your friends are working out, you're more likely to work out. All your friends are eating well, you're more likely to eat well. Right. So scale of 0 to 10, how positive encouraging are your friends? And again, we all need people to encourage us, to cheerleader for us, to tell us what we need to hear to be real with us. If you haven't found that person yet, be that person, you know, be that person for someone else. Right. You know, especially be that person for you. So that's number five. Rate yourself zero to ten. Because we all have family members, friends that just are energy vampires. And how's our brain afterwards? Like we have no focus.

A few years ago when I started this, this journey and not to say that those, these are the good people, these are the bad people, it was just that. Yeah, yeah, I listened to a lecture about service and meaning. Food should serve you, water should serve you, your, your relationships that serve you. And it's not like that somebody can't do something for you. It's. It was that they don't take something from you. Yeah, yeah.

I feel like you could love your friends and your family, but they don't have to be your peer group like that have influence on how you think, your standards, your character, your, your habits and, and everything. But yeah, it's a balance for sure. It's not necessarily easy. Number six is a clean environment. So to answer your question, control your environment. Because our external world is a reflection of our internal world. You have a messy environment. Not only does it create chaos here in your mind, it takes energy to keep track of where everything is. It's just like when you clean your desk or you clean your computer and everything's in the right file folder, then you have clarity of thought. You don't have to spend energy if you have too many tabs open. You wonder why you're tired. Even if it's minimized. It still takes up, you know, RAM and energy to run it. Sure. So on a scale of 0 to 10, how clean your environment? When I say clean environment, I would also say not only making your bed and clean your desk, but also how clean's the air? You know, the lighting, you know, a lot of buildings and schools, the fluorescent lighting, it's not, it's not. Your eyes are the only part.

It's like Fruit of Light. Yeah.

It's like your eyes are only part of kind of your brain. The extension of that's outside your skull. And it's the buildings have that because they're honestly, they're cheap.

Yeah.

But how clean is the air? Because the nerve, the toxins that come off of mold, new car, new carpeting, new furniture, like, I mean, it's just, it's everywhere. Vocs and so how are you? How clean is your environment? Water, you know, emfs, everything. Everything. Right. Number seven, sleep.

Yeah.

This is something that is. Is huge. Yeah. I'll mention three things for your brain. Number one, if you have long term memory issues, check your sleep, because that's where you consult.

Heard you say that before.

Yeah. When you sleep is when you consolidate short to long term memory. You also potentially, when you sleep, the sewage system kicks on and you clean out the sewage system, you clean out the beta amyloid plaque that can lead to brain aging challenges. And the third thing is also where you dream. And I just want to remind people that some of the most amazing things in the world, inventions, literature, music, came from dream states. Like when you're studying and working all day, your brain doesn't shut off at night. In some ways it's more active. It's integrating memory. It's coming up with solutions. And so I would say, like Mary Shelley created Frankenstein in her dream. You know, a chemist created the periodic table, the framework in his dream. You know, Paul McCartney created this song yesterday in his dream. Right. But that requires sleep.

Right.

And I know you have some.

That is a superpower.

Yeah, I really sleep. Absolutely. Because again, everyone wants to know the one thing, but if you don't do all of them, you just won't be at optimal. You won't be that ultimate human that you desire and that you really deserve. And so, you know, and then I don't know what your favorite sleep kind of go to. For me, I need the direct sunlight first thing in the morning, at least for 5, 10 minutes outside and get grounded. I need to not do caffeine past a certain time because I am sensitive to it, not everybody is. And I. One of the game changers for me is every. Most people have an alarm to wake up when you know, I'm having an alarm or trigger to go to sleep. Because I find that your body loves that circadian rhythm. Love that 24 hour clock, loves structure. Even on the weekends.

Oh, it absolutely loves structure.

Going to sleep at the same time each time helps you sleep better.

One of the biggest improvements we had in total sleep scores was, was consistent bedtimes. Consistent bedtimes. No alcohol, no food, two hours prior to bedtime.

I love that I would, I would definitely subscribe. Yeah. Alcohol could maybe knock somebody out, but doesn't mean they're getting quality.

Yeah. Quality sleep, it turns to acetaldehyde and it raises her blood sugar at night. So in fact that was the only factor that we weighed that had a 100 detrimental outcome.

Interesting.

Some people didn't have a massive change in sleep score if they ate too close to bedtime. Some people didn't have a massive sleep change in sleep score if they didn't cool the room. Some people had not a massive change in sleep score if they didn't unplug the electronics 6ft from their head. Every single person that had alcohol, that recorded alcohol recorded sleep score below baseline.

Wow.

So that's why for me it's just been.

Yeah. And so I think it's important to have a to do list for our productivity. But having a not to do list, having your non negotiables, like for me, I just cannot touch my phone the first 30 minutes of the day and the last 30 minutes a day because I just know the effect and the consequence of it. But that's a good one with alcohol. Yeah. For me, sleep also. Just reminding everybody, everyone knows this, but as hunter gatherers, we would know it'd be time to sleep because the environment would tell us there would be a decrease of light and temperature, you know.

And so light and temperature and noise and activity and it would go to a very rhythmic sequence of noises. Like a white noise machine.

Yeah. So zero to zero to tens, where everyone rate their sleep the past seven days and then finally eight, nine and ten for a better brain. Eight is brain protection. Pretty simple. Meaning your brain is resilient, but it is fragile. Right. You know, and so having had concussions, myself having had a traumatic brain injury, you know, so 0 to 10, just avoiding the like kind of the things that could get you in accidents, wearing a helmet, shooting on your kids, that kind of things. I know you work with a lot of UFC fighters. I work with a lot of fighters. I work with a lot of hockey players, a lot of football players. You know, that impact is okay, so 0 to 10. Protect your brain. How well you protect your brain. Number nine is a big one. New learnings, meaning we talked about how you build your physical muscles through novelty, nutrition. How much novelty are you giving your brain? The two dips. We see performance in someone's stage, like stages of ages and stages of life, usually when you graduate school and when they retire. Some. Some people associate education with just with learning, with education, but when their formal education is done, they're like, oh, I'm done with my learning. I just know everything, you know, what I need to know. And then there's dip. And also when people retire, they often retire their. Their mind and their brain is, you know, like, that brain needs to be active, otherwise their body is not going to be far behind. And there was a study done with nuns that were living 80, 90, and above, and researchers wanted to find out what the contributing factors was to their longevity. They said half was a combination of their faith, emotional gratitude, and so on. The other half, though, was they were lifelong learners. They were studying, doing deep study every day, having deep conversations with one another every day. And because of it, it added years to their life and life to their years. It was on the COVID of Time magazine. The study, I think, was called Aging with Grace. So on scale 0 to 10, how much are you exercising your mind? And for me, I think it's important to have a to learn list. Learning something new every 30 days and to read every. My favorite exercise for the mind is reading. Yes. You know, reading. If people seen photos of me online with Oprah or Elon or whoever. People want to know how we bonded. We bonded over books, really?

Right.

You read to succeed and, you know, and, you know, even went to war. Got to see the. Go to Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, and, you know, he was. He reads 500 pages a day. He reads 500. 500 pages. Right. Because the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. Wow. Right? The number one skill I feel like people need to master in the 21st century is our ability to learn rapidly. Like, think about it. Our ability to learn rapidly and translate that learning into action is the ultimate competitive advantage. Agreed. Because then we could apply it towards, you know, if we could focus, remember, understand, read faster, retain it. We could apply it towards medicine, marketing, money management, Mandarin, martial arts. Everything gets easier in your life. It's like a lead domino. It's like A superpower that give you all the other superpowers. So reading for 30 minutes a day. And the benefit is, if somebody has decades of experience and they put into a book and you can sit down and read that book in a few days, you could download decades into days. That's a huge advantage. Getting all decades of wisdom in a few days. What would you.

That could help you narrow your focus.

It's the best thing in terms of the matrix. I know kung fu. That would come to it. So 0 to 10 learnings. And then finally, the 10th thing is stress management. You know, I just want to remind people it's because it's invisible. And sometimes we're so used to it, it's like fish and water. They don't see the water because they're in it. But financial stress, emotional stress, relationship stress, chronic stress has been shown to shrink the human brain.

Yes.

By the way, chronic fear actually will suppress your immune system. Whole area science called psychoneuroimmunology can make you more susceptible to colds, the flus, the viruses, all the fear. And I just want to remind people also there's an algorithm to your mind, as there is with social media. Like the prime directive of social media is whatever you engage with, they give you more of. If you engage with all the cat videos, they show you more cat videos. Right. If you, like, share, they're going to show you more of it. And that's going to be your whole reality. Well, our minds are the same way. Whatever we're engaged with consistently, we're going to get more of. And if it happens to be hijacked by what bleeds, leads, and it's the news and it's what's dark and threatening and scary, we're going to see more of that around and that'll affect our immune system, you know, our nervous system, our mental health, and so much more. But stress management, on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being best, how well are you coping with stress? Yeah, you know, what mechanisms or tools or rituals, you know, for me, nature, you know, is a big deal for me, meditation, breath, work, very important. The biohack, you know, saunas, whatever you want to add to that. Cold plunges.

I got a cold plunge right in the other room. Yeah.

That's amazing. I love it.

I don't bring up the ice for my. From my bathtub. Right in the other room.

Yeah.

Huge believer.

So Those are the 10 things. And what I would challenge everyone to do to make it personal and rewarding for you is Rate yourself 0 to 10 on each one and then see the areas where you're a little bit low and put some time and attention and whatever you nourish flourishes. Right? Yes. And that's, that's the idea is like self awareness I think is a superpower.

I do too.

You know, I just, I know there's no time to talk about it here, but you know that brain assessment I mentioned, there's a brain assessment we have in the book that I'll give to everyone for free. And I'm curious what yours is. I realize after 30 years of teaching this that it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart? That everybody has a zone of genius. And part of it deter is determined by how your brain is organized. And we found four buckets that we fall in and there's a primary, a secondary and it shows you your strengths. And most people lead with their strengths. But once you know your brain type or your brain animal, then we give people free suggestions, a report on how to read faster, remember names, lead parent.

Based on your brain type, focusing on your weekly weaknesses.

It's, it's on actually focus. It's strength based approach, no strength. So it's interesting. So people could go to mybrainanimal.com it's free my brain animal mybrainanimal.com and you'll, it's four minutes multiple choice and we pull from left brain, right brain theory, introvert, extrovert, all kinds of multi personality tests, everything to build this assessment. But once you understand what your brain is, there's four brain types. It's code, C, O, D E. C is a cheetah. So a cheetah is someone who's fast acting. That's their primary trait. They act and implement. They have strong intuition, they adapt in fast paced environments. The O in code are your owls. And your owls, their predominant trait is logic and they love data. And so everyone's a combination of these, right? You'll see what your primaries and secondaries are. Your owls, they love data, research, facts, formulas. The D are dolphins. Their primary trait is creativity. They could visualize their lives or their brand or where they're going. They have strong imagination and problem solving skills. And finally the fourth, the E in code are your elephants. And your elephant's dominant trait is empathy. Highly compassionate, they're your community builders. Now it's interesting because we had our team take it, which is international team and 100% of our customer service team are elephants and we didn't hire for them, right? But these are People who want people to feel seen. They're highly empathetic. They want people to feel heard. They are community builders.

That's great.

You know, our CEO who's in the room, my business partner of 20 years, she's a dolphin. She has this. She has this vision, and she has an amazing problem solving ability, pattern recognition, and she has this vision of, you know, affecting a billion brains and leaving no brain left behind. Our cfo, our financial person, is an owl. Has to see the numbers every day. Right. But it's funny how we fall into our elements. So when people go to mybrainanimal.com, they'll see what their animal is. And I love people to post it and tag Gary and tag me. I would love to, because I would love to see what the community is as a whole in terms of percentages. When we see it, I'll repost a few and we'll gift out a bunch of signed copies randomly to Limitless of the book. But we really just appreciate it. But once you know it, there's a. In Matrix, there's. There's a scene where Neo meets the oracle for the first time in her kitchen, and she's baking cookies. What most people don't see in the scene is there's a sign above the door when. At the kitchen door when Neo walks in, it says, know thyself. And I think the part in order to be fulfilled in life and to be even more ultimate here, human, is you need the curiosity to know yourself. Right. That's why people, I don't know, they go therapy, they journal, they take assessments, they do inner work or plant medicine, whatever their journey is. Right. To get to know who they are, what they stand for.

Right.

And what their purpose is, what they believe. You know? And then once you have the curiosity and know yourself, the other part is hard. You need the courage to be yourself.

Yeah.

Because a lot of people get to know who they are and what they stand for, but acting on it is a different game. Right. Going out there and living it. And I believe the life you live are the lessons you teach the people around you. You know, and so it's. It's funny. And it's hard to make change. Change is hard. And growth is scary.

Yeah.

But nothing is as hard and scary as being stuck somewhere where you don't belong.

Yeah. Amen to that. You know, I think that's leading very well into my final question that I ask every guest on podcast, and that is. And there's no right or wrong answer to this. Question. But I feel like you've already explained it. And what does it mean to you to be a superhuman or an ultimate human? What does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

Yeah, I mean for me it's somebody who embodies more of that, that limitless mindset, motivation and methods. You know, I think an ultimate human, they don't shrink what's possible to fit their mind, they expand their mind to fit really all that's possible.

Yeah.

Right out of scarcity and fear, I think a lot of people downgrade their dreams to meet their current reality. When we should upgrade our mindset, our motivation, the methods we're using, the mentorship that we have to meet our destiny. I always tell people life is like an egg and this could relate to an alternate human. Imagine an egg. An egg like it's funny. Life like an egg. An egg like if it has an external force, you know it, it dies. But if it, there's an ex. If it's broken by an internal force, then life is created. Right. And so great things begin on the inside.

Yeah.

You know and if people are still listening to this, they have great, they've self selected, they have greatness inside of them. They're on the. I think we're on this all shared journey to reveal and realize our fullest potential.

Yeah.

And that's for me that, that, that would be what an ultimate human is.

That is astounding.

You know somebody, I truly believe there's a version of you, of everyone listening that's patiently waiting. And the goal is we show up every single day until we're introduced.

Definitely let it out. So for my audience, first of all, this has been amazing. I'm definitely can tell I'm going to have you back and this is going to be a great episode. But how does my audience find out more about you? How do they get a copy of the book? Where can they follow you on social media?

Yeah, going through it. BrainNutrition.com so get the free stuff. Right. Brain Nutrition.com is a list of all the nootropics that I mentioned earlier. The spelling and the origins and the human studies brain mybrainanimal.com they could take.

The quiz My brain animal. When you guys are going to comment.

Yeah. And then you're going to post. You get this nice AI art and you could post it and tag, Tag Gary, tag myself. So we get to see it. So we see which animals are really predominant and yeah, and they could do that. And the book you can find anywhere. It's called Limitless, if you're into podcasts, or you could go on to search Jim Kwik and podcasts, and you could join us there. We have done 400 episodes, and then our YouTube, we have about 1.6 million subscribers. There's. So we put a lot of content there also, as well, me on stage and, you know, extended versions of some interviews and stuff like that.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Well, guys, Jim Kwik, I mean, this is gonna. This is gonna take the cake for, you know, our brain Brain Journey interviews. And I hope that you'll come back again and be another guest on the ultimate human podcast, because I know my audience is gonna get a lot out of this. And as always, that's just science.