Jim Kwik explains how belief shapes what you pursue: if you think your brain can grow, you seek strategies; if you think it can't, you stay stuck. His journaling practice uncovers where self-doubt comes from. He was labeled a "boy with a broken brain" by a teacher until a mentor told him he just needed to learn how to learn.
Chapters
If you believe you can or believe you can't, either way, you're right. If you believe your brain can adapt and improve, that your potential, your memory, your focus, your reading speed is not fixed like your shoe size, right? Then you'll look for strategies and you'll stick with them. The choice between staying stuck and unlocking your potential begins with your mindset. So how do we shift it? You could start small. Leave positive reminders around your environment. It might be a sticky note on your mirror that says, "I am capable. I'm learning faster every day." But my favorite practice really is journaling. Here's how I do it: You start with one limiting belief. Maybe it's I'm not smart enough. Write it down. Then ask yourself, why do I believe this? And then write down the answer. Then ask, where did I? You'll realize those beliefs didn't even come from you. They're BS, right? They're belief systems. They're lies. Limited ideas entertained. They came from someone else, maybe a parent, a classmate, or like me, in my case, a teacher who labeled me as the boy with the broken brain. So every single time I did badly in school or wasn't picked for sports, which was like all the time, I would say, oh, 'cause I have the broken brain. For a long time, I believed her, but I eventually had a choice. Keep believing her words or believe what my mentor shared with me. She said, Jim, you do not have a broken brain. You just need to learn how to learn. We tend to believe the negative voices louder than the positive ones, but in the end, we all have a choice.
