Boost Your Focus

Welcome to this week's Kwik Brain Challenge. This is your Kwik Challenge, and remember, this series that we are doing for you is about mental fitness. It's about making real change in your life by challenging yourself to do brand new things, to create neurogenesis, neuroplasticity. Why wouldn't you want to do this? Right? Because this is novelty. We talk about how to make new connections, how to add stimulus into your life to be able to challenge yourself. So that way you could challenge yourself in other areas, so you could have that strength. And that's really what we're about today, about strength. So I'm in the Kwik Brain gym today, and the reference episodes that you want to, if you haven't listened to them before, we're gonna talk about physical exercises you could do to be able to boost your brain power. This is really exciting stuff, right? So the 2 episodes you wanna listen to or re-listen to as a refresher are episodes number 65 with movement coach and expert, Aaron Alexander, incredible episode on how the body moves to create more of these grooves, if you will. And the other episode is number 82, 82 with our friend Shawn Stevenson, sleep expert. We've done a number of episodes with Shawn, but also we talk about physical activity, and we actually come to my gym here and we show physical movements you could do to boost your brainpower. Now, I'm going to show you another exercise because here's the challenge. They say sitting is the new smoking. That the primary reason you have a brain is actually to control your movement. But did you know that as your body moves, you actually stimulate what they call brain-derived neurotrophic factors, which is like fertilizer for your brain? It helps create new brain cells and new connections. So you have to challenge yourself physically. So I recommend people go for a walk and study for 25 minutes. You know, we talked about in previous episodes of time management, the Pomodoro Technique, how your focus It starts to wane after about 25 minutes. That's why every episode is 20 minutes or less, and that's why we stay in your focus and your flow. And that's by design, because you're, you're busy, right? And your time is very valuable. So we make it extremely concise and to the point. And so we want to encourage you to move every 30 minutes. And one of the things you could do to get that activity in is learning how to juggle. Now, if you've gone through our reading program, we have a very structured 21-day program on how to triple your reading speed at kwiklearning.com. But part of what we do is we train you to increase your peripheral vision, so when you look at a word, you can actually see not just that word, but the word to the left and to the right. And that helps you to be able to absorb information faster. Now, specifically when I teach juggling— and now I might say juggling, you're like, Jim, I am not coordinated, I can't even catch a ball. Here's the thing, little by little, a little becomes a lot. That's why we do these daily challenges, 'cause consistency compounds, and you start to develop a competence, because it's a confidence-competence loop in psychology. The more competent you get, the more confident you get, the more likely you're gonna do it, which increases your skill level, and which increases your overall certainty and confidence again. So it's self-reinforcing. So what I want you to do is I want you to grab a ball. Now, if you know how to juggle, do this with me. Okay. And I'm not gonna take out flaming swords, you know, or anything like electric saws or anything like that. What we're gonna do is we're gonna start really small, alright? Because again, little by little, a little becomes a lot. It's about changing habits. And what we're doing throughout this entire challenge, #KwikChallenge, is showing you you are a master of your habits. You're not at the effect of your habits. You can create your habits, and we're doing that through this process. And again, we're always gonna award, so make sure When you do this and you hashtag #KwikChallenge, that you post it and tag us in it, because as you know, we put out Amazon gift cards and our favorite books, and we repost some of our favorite also as well. So there was a study done in Oxford University saying jugglers actually have bigger brains. They create more white matter, and that's really exciting. So I'm going to show you how to do that. Now, if you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook on video, you see— you could see me demonstrate this. If you're not, just listen into the audio and you get a sense of it. And certainly you can watch any Any video online and teach you the basics of juggling. Now, I'm not a professional juggler. I grew up as a tennis player, so I would have, you know, tennis balls like this, and I'd be waiting for a court, and I taught myself how to be able to learn it. What you're going to do is you're going to start with one ball, just one ball. Now, I actually recommend you do it over a bed or over a couch, because that way you're not chasing things all over the place. The other recommendation I would have is actually Using a rolled-up sock. Now, why would I ask you to roll up a sock? It's because they don't roll, it just falls flat. But what I want you to do is just with one ball in your dominant hand, I just want you to practice going like this, just tossing it from one hand to another. Now, one hand to another, all right? And here's the thing, a lot of people, if you drop it, that's absolutely okay, because remember, there's no failure, there's only feedback. And so everyone thinks that if you drop it, you made a mistake, but it's a good metaphor for your life. Because you're not making mistakes, right? The only people who make mistakes are people who try, so that's just proof that you're trying. But maybe failure is not the opposite of success, maybe it's part of it. Just like a child learning how to walk falls 3, 4, 5, 500 times, you don't— they don't say, oh, I failed at walking, I'm not going to do it. But sometimes as adults we do that, so you want to reframe that. And so what you're going to focus on— in fact, just drop the ball right now, just drop it so we get that over with. All right, so nobody's perfect, that's not the goal. Now what you're going to do Learning to juggle. Put it in your dominant hand and just toss it to the other hand. Just toss it back and forth, back and forth. Toss the ball. Put a smile on your face. Breathe. You have to breathe through this process. I don't know why some people tend to hold their breath. Just toss it, and you're not going to get it perfect. And people are like, Jim, I'm having trouble catching it. It's not so much the catch, but it's the toss. You want it to go about up to the top of your head. So you're creating an arc, it's going right to the top of your head, and you're just catching it. Now, what you're gonna do is you're gonna practice this each day, and once you have the one ball down, then you're gonna introduce another ball, or another sock if you will. And what are you gonna do? One in each hand, just one in each hand, and you're gonna toss one, but here's what you don't wanna do. You don't wanna toss them at the same time. Why? Because why? They're just gonna collide together, right? So you're not gonna do that. The other reason why is you're gonna pause. What you're gonna do is I want you to imagine 2 peaks. So imagine 2 peaks or 2 triangles, and what you're gonna toss is you're gonna toss one ball to the opposite peak, and when it reaches the highest point, that's your cue to toss the other ball, okay? So watch this. This ball goes here, and when it hits here, then you're gonna throw the other ball. You see that? And so if you're not watching on video, certainly you can watch this on YouTube and Facebook also as well. A lot of you are listening to it on Stitcher or iTunes, which is absolutely fine. Or Pandora, Google Play. So what you're going to do is watch this. 1, 2, 3, and then you're going to stop. 1, 2, 3, stop. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. Remember, 2 peaks, one up to the one side, the other one to the opposite side. And again, the key is when it reaches its top, that's your cue to throw the other one, because you can't throw them at the same time, because that's not juggling. Because what you don't want to do also is this. This is Just passing the ball to the other hand. That's not juggling, okay? Both balls have to go in the air. 1, 2, 3. And then finally, the next third step, when you master that or get good at that, you feel comfortable, then I want you to grab 3 balls, 2 in your dominant hand. And this is what it looks like, the finished product, like this. And notice when I'm doing this, I'm looking right at you. I'm looking right at the lens if you're watching me on video. But it's a great exercise. We do it for our Kwik readers, because not only are they reading 3 times faster, but they actually have better focus, comprehension, retention, because we really focus on smart reading. But the reason we do it, again, is in order to— for me here, I can't look at all 3 balls, right? I only have 2 eyes. But in order to look at all of it, I soften my gaze, and I can take more of it in, which is why it's a great exercise to be a faster reader. And so, are you up for the challenge, Kwik Brains? Are you up for the challenge? We know the science behind jugglers and having bigger brains and making more connections. And also, it's a great activity to do to actually relax your eyes when you're out, when you're studying, or to get off the computer screen. So again, start with one ball, do it in front of a couch or a bed so when it falls, you could just, you don't have to bend over to pick it up, it's right there. Try it with a sock, nothing, you know, crazy, don't light any kind of garden tools or anything like that. And then just start one by one, one ball, do that for a few days or a week or two. Get one ball and then add another one, and then notice what we're doing. It's about mental fitness. We're exercising, getting ourselves to do things that might be difficult in order to be able to expand that, because how you do anything is how you do everything, right? How you do anything is how you do everything. So get good at doing difficult things, and then the things that you need to do in your life, you know, it's just like meditation. You're not practicing juggling to get better at juggling. You're practicing juggling also to get better with your brainpower and get better with your life. So what I want you to do, Kwik Brains, is take a picture, ask somebody to take a picture of you while you're juggling. And even if you're not doing it great, and post it and tag me @JimKwik, @KwikLearning also as well, and share your experience on this. And we'll repost some of our favorites. And as always, every single week we will award, just like we do with our one book a week, and other challenges that we do, Amazon gift cards, and our favorite books from our guests. So are you up for the challenge? Let's do this.