5 Steps to Keep Your Mind SHARP at Any Age 🧠

Welcome back.

We're wrapping up our Super Seniors Week with an important lesson about memory. Here to help us stay sharp is New York Times bestselling author and brain coach, Jim Kwik.

Hey, Jim.

Welcome, Jim.

Brain coach, I love that.

You know, Jim just found— Jim just witnessed us try to remember something from yesterday. And so this segment is very important because memory is—

Yeah, why is it important to exercise our brains?

So our brains control everything, and your mind is more like a, not so much an organ, but it acts like a muscle, and it's you use it or lose it. But if you put your arm in a sling for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger, it wouldn't even stay the same, it would atrophy. And so we just have to be very careful with our devices and all the tools that we have that we don't just give control, and we have to strengthen our brain.

We don't remember phone numbers anymore. We don't remember how to spell things anymore.

Directions. Yeah, they call that digital dementia, where you're so reliant on your, on your, keep your to-dos, your schedules, all the phone numbers. And I don't want to memorize 500 phone numbers, right? But we should be concerned that we can't remember one or a PIN number or passcode.

Do you know my PIN number? I know yours.

I know yours.

We know each other's, that's good. So what are some things we can do to stay sharp?

Yeah, so we created an acronym called SHARP.

Okay.

Just for this, for this conversation. And so the S stands for what you talked about earlier, which is sleep. I mean, how sharp do you feel when you get a bad night's sleep?

Not sharp at all.

Dull. Right, you can't focus, you don't have the energy.

Conversely though, if I get too much sleep, I also don't feel sharp.

So just the right amount of sleep.

The right amount of REM and deep sleep to restore your body and your brain. Cold is a wonderful way of doing that. I know it's a little controversial, sorry.

But if you're allergic to cold?

If you're allergic to cold, you know what you can do? You could take a warm bath with Epsom salt. That'll help you sleep, or a warm shower. When you come out, your core body temperature drops, and that's a signal for melatonin. Sleep is so very important. One of the things you could do also is you have an alarm clock to wake up, most people do. If you have an alarm clock to go to sleep—

Even more important.

Because your brain loves to have the rhythm even on the weekends, consistency.

Okay.

Okay.

So the, um, yes, and so the H stands for, in SHARP, stands for harnessing mindfulness. And what I mean by that is your brain's not meant to go a million miles an hour all day. You need to create brain breaks, like little pit stops to rejuvenate and recover. It could be just even 10 minutes of meditation or 10 minutes of gratitude or in nature.

I do that and it feels like pushing, like putting away all the files on your computer, just cleaning up the screen and pushing restart.

It's like a defrag, no doubt. The next tip that when you were going through it, the A, what were you at? A is always learning. Always learning. And one of the things, you have a to-do list, your brain actually grows through challenge. With challenge comes change. And, you know, I think reading is one of the most important things you could do. Reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body.

What about listening to a book?

Yes.

Same?

Yeah, it's very powerful. For retention and comprehension, reading is more effective because often when people are listening, they're doing— they're cleaning the house, they're working out, so they're really multitasking. So that's very important. In addition to have a to-do list, have a to-learn list.

Okay.

Learn list.

I love that.

And then the R is refuel. Specifically with water, your brain is 75 to 80% water.

Hydrate.

Yes, even at— we just did a podcast episode and talked about a recent study. If you're just 2% dehydrated, it could significantly compromise your cognitive health, your performance, lead to brain fog, forgetfulness, focus issues. So make sure what you eat and drink matters, especially for your gray matter. And then finally, the last one, the P, is physical exercise.

Yes. Right.

And the phrase is, as your body moves, your brain grooves. When you exercise, you create something called brain-derived neurotrophic factors, BDNF, which is like fertilizer for your brain. So no matter what your age or stage of life, these are like the fundamentals. Things like dance, ballroom dancing, Latin dancing, pickleball. Moving your body is so important to be able to move your brain.

All right, this is great. This is great information. When we come back, we're gonna try out a mental exercise for our brains.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Stick around. We are back with brain coach Jim Kwik. We're gonna exercise our brains. What are some exercises we can do for our brains?

So one of the things you could do is challenge your brain by maybe learning a language.

Okay.

And so I understand that you're learning Italian.

I've been learning Italian, yes.

Yeah, so maybe we could show everyone in the audience, you could do this with us. Stand up real quick.

Okay.

We're gonna learn how to count in Japanese.

Okay.

And you're gonna see it and do it, and everyone at home do this also as well. So repeat after me. And do this: ichi ni. Ichi ni. So ichi is one, ni is two in Japanese.

Ichi ni.

Three is san, like sun with an A. So just point to san.

San.

And then four is shi. So point to a female in the room. Shi. So ichi ni san shi. That's one through four.

Okay.

Five is go. So just take a few steps.

Go. Go.

And six is roku. Imagine you're rowing a canoe. So roku.

Roku.

All right, does everyone— let's see, let's see, let's see what we got. Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku. That's 1 through 6.

Nice!

Great job, everyone.

Guys, we speak Japanese. Amazing.

All right, what are some other exercises?

One of the things you could do to really enhance— there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's a trained memory and there's an untrained memory.

Okay.

I had a brain injury when I was a child, led to learning difficulties. I also lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's. This is something I'm very passionate about for the past 3 Remembering names. I mean, have you ever met somebody, they get their— you get their name and seconds later it just disappears?

Immediately. It's like it goes into the abyss.

So a great mental exercise— there's no such thing as a good or bad memory, there's a trained memory. So we could train it to remember names. So we created an acronym called B-SWAV. Very, very quickly. Next time you're at an event or a wedding, you need to remember names, just as you're checking yourself in the mirror, say, I'm gonna B-SWAV. The B is Believe. Okay. Because if you believe you can or believe you can't, either way you're right.

That's so true.

Yeah, your brain is like this incredible supercomputer and your self-talk is the program it will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet. So keep it positive.

Okay.

Even if you say, I don't have great memory, just add a little word like yet to keep the possibilities.

Yes, okay.

The E is exercise, and I don't mean physical exercise, I mean practice, 'cause practice makes progress. Yes. Right, practice makes progress.

Okay.

So I'm really good at remembering names, After the first few weeks, once you know how to type or you know how to drive, you know, it's a skill that you have.

Got it.

Something simple you could do right now is an exercise. Everyone shake out your hand. Do this, make a fist, put it to your chin. Now everyone, where's your chin?

Oh!

So part of the things you want to exercise is your attention. A lot of people, we're not forgetting the name, we're just not hearing the name and really listening.

Okay.

So the S in Be SWAB is you say the name. You get someone's name. Kelly, it's so good to be here. Right. Mark, thank you so much for having me. You say it right away to make sure you heard it. The U is you use the name in the conversation just 3 or 4 times. You don't abuse it. Right. Kelly, Mark, thank you for having me. Kelly, Mark, what do you want to talk about? That would be abuse.

Right.

Right.

But 3 or 4 times helps you to retain it. It helps you to overcome what I call the 6-second syndrome. Somebody tells you a name, you have 6 seconds to do something with it. Right. The, the The A in Suave is ask. If you ever met somebody, they have a unique name.

Ask.

You could ask about their name, right? Yeah. So if it's Gelman, you could ask, how do you spell that? What does it mean? Who are you named after? You know, what's everyone's favorite subject? Themselves, right? So you could ask about a person's names. And V. And then finally, the V is visualize. Some people tend to remember what they see. So try seeing what you want to remember. You could come up with just some fun thing. If you meet someone named Kelly and I maybe I accidentally spill some jelly, something that rhymes with Kelly, right? Or I I meet Mark and I put a check mark in, like with a marker on his forehead. So see, this allows you, someone named Mike, imagine them singing karaoke on a microphone. And it sounds very childish, but it helps you to be able to visualize it. 'Cause when you leave saying goodbye, you'll remember what happened. And then finally, the E in B-SWAB is end. You always wanna end saying goodbye using their name. Because if you could walk into a room and meet 20 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one of them, who are they all gonna remember? You, right? And that's the standard skill.

Very impressive, great advice.

Jim Kwik, amazing.

Yeah, thank you.

Jim Kwik's Limitless Expanded Edition is available everywhere books are sold. Thank you, Jim. Coming up next, Melba Wilson. We're going to cook.