Brain Techniques Applied in Real Life | Jim Kwik

Welcome to the Kwik Brain Podcast, and this is a very special episode. This is an episode, I'm going to call it on the fly, I'm going to call it Quick Results. These are stories and strategies from our clients, from our students, from our readers, from our podcast listeners. A lot of people always ask about different ways to be able to apply the methods. One of the joys for our team, we're small in people, but we're very big on purpose. Our purpose is to build better, brighter brains, no brain left behind. And we have a Slack communication channel where we communicate with the team. And prime directive every single morning when people start their days, and, you know, we have teammates different places in the world, is to check the— this channel that we have called Joy Stories. And these are stories that our team assembles every single day through your communications, where maybe you connected with us on social media. So we have some stories there that we see get posted a lot in our KwikBrain app, which many of you are a part of and a member of, our private Facebook group. Many of you text me messages in my text message, my text numbers and my Instagram profile, our emails, and we assemble them and we just post 1 or 2 each, you know, a day. So we have a couple dozen every single day and it just puts us in the spirit, you know, reminds us why we do what we do. And one of the ones we wanted to really highlight today is our new friend Gary. Gary, thanks for joining us.

Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

So you and I connected, this is our first conversation right now. We connected on social media and you had made a post, if memory serves me, which it usually does. It was around using some of the techniques that you learned from us applying towards Morse code, which was remarkable because it's one of the highlights when we hear people using our techniques. Recently, I heard a comedian, some of you may know who it is, but they were using some of the techniques to memorize their sets, you know, when they do stand-up. And so all these wide applications. But thank you for taking the time out of your day to share with our community your story. And just as background, Maybe you could tell people a little bit about how we connected or you connected with our content and why it was important to you.

Absolutely. So again, glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So I think I first was introduced to you through one of your free offers, right? I think there's the 3-video course on just how to remember things better. So a little bit of my backstory, I'll be 49 next month and was starting to accept the limiting belief that my memory is where it is, right? And it may not even get better, it may get worse. And so I had that limiting belief that I've got all these things going on at work. I'm an IT manager, and of course there's constant chaos there and a lot of multitasking, right, that goes on. And so it's hard to keep focus. It's hard to try to remember things. And I thought, well, you know, what could I do? So I'd seen you on social media, signed up for the free course, and really enjoyed it. I'm kind of skeptical with things, especially with courses online. So I thought, well, I'll try it, right, and see what kind of value I get out of it. And I got value right away, which was great. So then I signed up for the KwikBrain, the memory course, and from that started to actually apply the techniques, right? It's one thing to read the information, but until you apply it, right, I think this is something you say a lot, that you really don't have the knowledge yet. You know, it's not applied yet, so then it's really just information at that point, right? So I did a Google search for things that people memorize, right? And one of the things was Morse code. And so I used the tip that you gave, the turn into pictures, for Morse code to memorize that. And I think the idea through the course was, you know, try to memorize something that maybe you won't use every day or that isn't as important to you. Well, I can tell you in the IT realm, I don't use Morse code, right, day to day. But what a time that would be if so. That was the thing that I picked to start with to, you know, what could I memorize? What would be challenging for me to try to memorize?

Hmm.

And so I got into it and was pretty fascinated that, you know, what you taught in the course really just clicked, right? So I'll give you a perfect example. So the letter R in Morse code is the dot, dash, and a dot, right? So I thought of a radio, right? Like the old school radios in the older cars that you had your radio knobs on each side and the dial in the middle. That was easy to picture that as, hey, that's how I'll remember the letter R. The letter D, you know, I think of, uh, it's, it's dash, dot, dot. I think of like a dog's tail And then the 2 parts of its body after that for the dot dot. So I did that with each letter. And so what I'll do in the morning, a lot of times when I first wake up, I'll just pick a word just kind of randomly in my mind and say, okay, could I spell that word out in Morse code? And so I've been doing that. And so I've been telling other people about it. And of course they, they kind of laugh. They're like, well, you know, are you going to be using Morse code anytime soon? It's like, well, I hope not. Right. But again, I explained to them. So that kind of opens the door that, you know, I thought my memory was set. You know, that it was only, it was only going to be where it was and perhaps even worse. I blame my job, right? We've always got things that we can say, well, this is why, you know, I can't do this thing. And that I can't do this thing is that limiting belief, right, that you talk a lot about in the Limitless book, right? The Roger Bannister story, right, with the 4-minute mile. So, once I was able to apply those things in a very real way with something that I don't use every day, you know, day to day, It was exciting, right? It was exciting to me. So it wasn't just information anymore. It was actually applied knowledge. So what I've been doing recently to go a step further, it's one thing to be able to say, hey, I can quote any letter of Morse code for you, you know, on demand. But is that really applying it? So it's applying the memorization technique, right, of the turn into pictures. So there's, there's a website that I found that actually will play one word for you. In Morse code. Now, I'm at the beginner level. I believe it's meridianpost.com, but it will play a clip of a word. Actually, there's a series of 5 words, and so you get to listen to those, and then you're supposed to write it down and then check your answers against the answer key once you're done. And I'm about a B student right now, so there's a big difference between picturing that in my mind and then hearing the sounds, right? And then Writing those out on paper and then, you know, seeing how, how much I get right. I'm typically 4 out of 5, if not 5 out of 5, but I'll be conservative and say I'm usually about a B student on that. But it's fun, right? It's applied knowledge that's fun. And so, you know, for my, my day job, we have over 300 automation applications that we keep up with. So I can't— right now, I don't know all of them by memory.

Right.

But my hope is to, if I could do that with Morse code, right, what could I do with all of these tools in terms of memorizing which ones do, you know, what features, what functions, you know, that kind of thing?

That's outstanding, Gary. Congratulations. But let's unpack this a little bit. Initially, you opened up with saying that online you were looking at things and initially you were skeptical. And I could appreciate skepticism because being skeptical means you just, you want to know the truth, right?

Right.

Some people say they're skeptical and they're just really kind of closed-minded Or they're negative. But, a healthy dose of skepticism means you just want to unravel what is real. And so, congratulations on that and being open. We talk about your mind is like a parachute, only works when it is opened. And, you were talking about the methods, turning things into a picture and you use even a basic association. It's kind of a logical association where you take something like an R and it's dot-dash-dot, I think you said.

Right.

And, just imagine Like a radio, like a stereo, and he has that as maybe a volume or bass turning. And so that's like a basic association, a logical association that you could also visualize, you know, that you could see a dog and you said, what is it, dash dot dot. And so a dog, you know, with its tail. And it's amazing, you know, when you understand how your memory works, that you could work your memory.

Yes.

And so the method is wonderful. And so my question for you is, you know, in the Limitless Model, we talk about 3 Ms that we have to unlimit to become more limitless. Right. One is upgrading our methods. And a lot of people, as you mentioned, they learn information, but they don't apply it because usually they have to do some work in the area of mindset or motivation, those first 2 M's.

Right.

And I want to revisit when you were talking about Roger Bannister and this belief. When you started to learn Morse code and you said, wow, this really works, how did that change your belief in— we talk about lies, right? Limiting ideas that we entertain. In our work. How did that start to unravel some of limiting beliefs maybe about your capabilities, maybe about yourself, maybe about globally what's possible?

Absolutely. Yeah. So that's, that's the exciting part, right? That, you know, it's one thing to read information. It's another thing to apply it and say, okay, that worked. But it was so exciting. It was, it's almost like magic, right? That just, hey, I can do this. And it's okay to play with it, right? In terms of our memory, right? It's okay to, to have fun with it, you know? So, you know, picturing the dog or picturing the radio was, you know, just kind of some mental fun. So by, By doing just a few random letters that I'd picked out, I realized that, well, if I can do that for a couple of them, surely I can do it for a couple more. Because sometimes that's what we need. We don't need to know the whole picture. It's what's that next step? So if I can memorize 2 things, I can memorize 4 things. But when I got through the whole alphabet and realized that, you know, like I said, I wake up in the morning now and just kind of pick a random word, or I'll look to— if I log into my computer, I'll just pick a word and say, okay, could I recite that in Morse code by writing that out? And I can, that's what's really exciting to me. It's just, it's just fun. It doesn't seem like what I think classical learning was for me in school was, it was rough, right? It was always just hard. It was something you had to work at. And I don't want to memorize all this stuff. So this was more playful. This was more fun. But I think if you can approach it that way, and you talk about this a lot, you know, in your podcasts and in the Limitless book, that, you know, when we can approach it with kind of that childlike view.

Yeah.

And have fun with it, it can really help it stick right in our minds.

So that's astonishing. When we talk about— so that was about the part about mindset, and you had a certain attitude and assumptions. And, you know, prior, maybe you feel like we're all getting older, and maybe it's natural for us to kind of not have quite the same capabilities or mental capacities, memory as we once had. When we talk about motivation, you know, we talk about Purpose. And we talk about small, simple steps and how motivation is— we're not always motivated all the time, you know, myself included. But what was the reason or the purpose behind taking this on? You know, it's interesting that you took something— he followed our directions, which is just, first of all, thank you. Because I think, you know, we have to lead by example. And by you taking information that might not be practical to you, might be a little bit technical, might not be the most thrilling thing, you know, in the world, if you could apply it towards that, imagine, you know, applying the methods towards things you— that is naturally fun for you, something you have natural interest and inclination for. But with reasons come results. So was your purpose to grow, to challenge yourself? What was the impetus of the drive?

Yeah, really both of those. So again, I recognized that I had that limiting mindset that, you know, wait a minute, you know, I don't have to. So I'm just telling myself a story, right? I'm telling myself that lie. Like you said, I'm entertaining this, this idea that Isn't necessarily true. So, you know, my day job as an IT manager, there's a lot of, you know, what we call task switching because there really is no multitasking, right? So it's a lot of task switching. And I found that I just kept forgetting things. And it's like, how can I, how can I better improve my mind, you know, in such a way that, you know, I don't forget as many things? At least if I can just start there, right? That's my next step. How can I remember more? You know, again, I'd found you through Instagram and again checked out the free course. It's like, hey, this, this looks like this would work and it looks fun, right? So I think, I think that That was a lot of it, right? That it looked fun. There wasn't a lot of pressure, right? No one was making me do this. This was something I was choosing to do, but it was for that personal growth. So that was pretty much my reasoning.

And then going to breaking down motivation into also small, simple steps, you didn't do all letters and I assume maybe you looked at numbers also as well, but you didn't do it all at once, right?

Right.

Little letter bite size.

Just a couple at a time. Yeah, just a couple at a time. And I just kind of drew them randomly because I didn't want to— I was trying to approach this in a way that I probably normally wouldn't approach it, right? Because I was trying to get my mind to expand even further that, you know, if you always do what you've always done, what do you always get, right? You're always going to get what you've always received in the past. So I thought, I'm just going to approach this kind of more randomly. So when I picked out the letters, the letter R was the first one. The letter Z, which is dash dash dot dot, I think of Zorro. Right. The, uh, with the swords. And so I think of the, the 2 dashes as swords and the 2 dots as, you know, as they poke each other, right, with the swords. Those are the connection points. But again, just had that imaginary fun with it, but it stuck, right? It really just became that sticky memory. And it's like this, this turning it into pictures, that tip, you know, that's mentioned in the course really just made sense at that point. It's like, I can do this. And I did struggle with a few of them. So I was like, well, what can I turn this into a picture of?

Right.

How am I going to remember this?

Yeah.

It kind of touches on the PEG method a little bit too, how I can do it in random order, right? It doesn't have to be A through Z, right? I can just pick any letter and do it that way too.

And it also is a great exercise in mental flexibility, right? And cognitive fitness and creativity because it forces you to exercise your imagination and maybe activate different parts of our brain that might not be as utilized. You know, we talk about your brain and your memory, it's use it or lose it. And it's great that you found something that's practical and then you also applied it and you were consistent about it, right?

Right.

And, and you made it fun and you found a website to be able to challenge you to another level and doing, doing full words, which is extraordinary. You know, there's this quote in self-development that says, what you practice in private, you're rewarded for in public.

Yes.

I think it was Jim Rohn who said that initially. And, and, and it shows, right? And so maybe what would your advice be for someone who is like you, who is listening to a podcast, they happen to stumble upon this, or maybe they're watching this on YouTube or somewhere on social media, and they're considering, you know, exploring what's possible. You know, they feel limited in some area. Maybe they don't have the focus. Maybe they read slowly, or maybe they just, they say to themselves, I'm just getting older. You know, what would your advice be?

So it's, you know, first of all, for me, it was recognizing that limiting belief is what I'm saying. You know, so if I say I am, right, I am just getting older. If, if we can recognize those things we say to ourselves, First of all, if we're going to do something or someone says, hey, try this out, what's our first hesitance? I think that first hesitance is our answer to what our limiting belief could be. For me, it was, this is just who I am. I'm getting older. So I think that would be the first step. But then the fact that it can be fun, right? There's no, you know, I'm not going to lose anything here, right? If I was struggling with my memory, surely this isn't going to make it worse, right? So I didn't really have anything to lose, right?

Yeah.

And just by having fun with it and finding a way to apply it that made sense to me, You know, some people might look at the letter R and think, well, I don't think of a radio. I think of something else, right? Or I don't think of a dog with the letter D the way it's spelled out in Morse code. I think of something else. That's great, right? That's how we're unique. But I think it's just take that one step forward, right? Take that one step forward, even towards that resistance. So again, if my resistance is, well, you know, I'm going to be 49 next month and this is just how it's going to be, but I'm going to take one step forward anyway. Right. So I think that would be, that would be my best advice. Just have fun with it and just take that one step. And I think you'll be amazed at what you find out. You know, like I said, it's, it's kind of like magic, right? When these things start to come together and you realize that, hey, this really works, right? And this is something I can really use and apply and not just be more head knowledge that I've got, but information that I can use, you know, day to day.

And there's a ripple effect, right? When you do something that you once believed maybe wasn't possible or maybe possible for, for you, or, you know, then it opens up other possibilities. You might even start doubting what you're capable of in a good way, maybe thinking, you know, in what area do I feel— did I have the same certainty? And it's just maybe a lie. It's a limited idea that I'm entertaining. What else is possible? I couldn't do this, now I can, right? And where else can I apply this in my life where I may be shrinking down? Have you showed other people, like, just in, you know, in your circle, like— I have.

What you've done with—

some people, I would imagine, are like, why are you spending time doing that?

Yes.

Some people could say that about golf or knitting or, you know, anything really that we put our time and our hobbies into. You know, what an opportunity to exercise mental fitness. You know, we talk about movement or exercising a few days each week or, you know, moving throughout the day, but this is kind of a different way of CrossFit your mind. But what's the reaction you've gotten from people around you? And have you tried sharing this or teaching somebody this method, that there is a method behind what looks like magic?

So I didn't do the Morse code, but we did the story linking. method, right? The chain linking method with the table of elements, the periodic table. So I was working with my nephew. My nephew is 11, I believe. In one day, he spent the night with us. He likes to come over and hang out, and he'd spent the night with us, and I was working with him on it and just having fun with it, right? And he was able to recite the first 10 elements before he went home. And this is something he's not even studied in school yet, right? So this is— he kind of has that head start.

That's great.

But I thought, you know, here I am again thinking I'm becoming I'm this 49-year-old man. I'm going to be— I'm getting old, right? That was my limiting belief that I couldn't do better. And I thought, wow, what an opportunity. If I'd had this when I was younger, you know, what could I have done with it, you know, by this time? And who knows, right? So here's where I am. Here's where I've started. This is where I'm going to go forward from. But for somebody younger, you know, so I thought, hey, I'll work with my nephew. So I taught him that technique and he had a lot of fun with it, right? Of course, being a child, you know, he can easily tap into that childlike mentality. A coworker of mine has a couple of in junior high age in school. And so I taught him the first 10 elements as well. And so he was working with his kids. And so, yeah, that's the thing. It's not something that you just learn it and you say, oh, look what I can do. It's like anybody can do this if they just apply it and have fun with it and find a way that's meaningful for them to have fun with it. Right? So that's just a couple of examples. My wife could tell you that she's probably tired of me walking into the other room saying, hey, give me a number between 1 and 46, because I've also memorized the presidents using in the, uh, the memory palace. Yeah, you know, right, right, by picking rooms in my house. And so, or we'll be driving down the road and I'll say, hey, give me a number, and then I'll, I'll tell her and then she'll check it on her phone. And but we have fun with it, you know, too. But there at the beginning, I was just very consistent, like you said, going, hey, quiz me on this. I want to make sure I've got the pictures in my mind, I've got the story in my mind, I've got the, the links established. Again, just, just been having fun with it.

Thank you so much, Gary. It's from these kind of stories I feel like that they can— they're to inspire that some people maybe will watch a video or be in an audience when we present and they'll say, oh, that person could do it on stage, but I don't know if I can. And really, the nature of our work is about transcending. It's about ending the trance, ending this— maybe this mass hypnosis that we're limited. Maybe it's perpetrated by marketing or media or just our social circles that somehow we're enough. And, you know, our stance on it for our team has always been, you know, that we need to be kind to ourselves, because these are things that weren't necessarily taught traditionally, that if you want to improve your self-esteem and confidence almost overnight, you know, study the power of your own mind, that you have this incredible gift, that if you can understand these words that we're saying right now, you have this incredible processor between your ears, and it doesn't come with an owner's manual, you know. So I applaud you for your curiosity, your playfulness, Your your discipline for following through, and also your ability right now even to share it because there are a lot of people who are listening to this right now, and maybe your story inspires. They could see their journey in some of your words, and they're looking maybe to give themselves another chance or their kids another shot. I think we every day we wake up with do we have a chance? We have choice every single day that we either have an opportunity to step up and grow a little bit more, or a decision to stay the same when there's no judgment on anything. You know, but I always applaud people who take information and they implement it. It's, you know, and if it's confusing, if it's overwhelming, do exactly what you just said. Break it down into small, small, simple steps. You know, what is a tiny thing I could do right now to practice this, to have fun with this, to share this with a family member or friend? And all those little things add up to big things. Gary, do you have any questions for me? You know, this is amazing. Again, with these quick results, and you might not call it that, but these are again these stories and strategies from the field, from our, from our students, our clients, or people have read our book or listened to our podcast. I'm curious if there's any questions you have for me, and really curious what's next for you. You know, where do you plan to apply these, these tools and this new mindset and your limitless motivation? Where do you like to put that spotlight on next?

So that next simpler kind of fun thing is memorizing my team's birthdays. Right, uh, in terms of just memorizing their birthdays so that, you know, just from memory I can know when it's their birthday and, you know, wish them a happy birthday. I can go out and look this information up, but what if I could look it up here, right? And just have it at the— have it at the tips of my mind, you could say. And then just, you know, again, with all the automation tools that we have, we have about 300. I'm still not familiar with all of them. I've worked for the company for years. So how can I, how can I memorize more of those and their functionality? How can I maybe link those together in a story, or how can I turn it into pictures? You know, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

But I'm definitely going to continue sharing, you know, through social media. Instagram is probably my biggest one. So just because it's, it's one of those things, you discover something, right, that seems like magic, and it's like, you've got to check this out. I mean, you really need to look at this and, you know, try it out for yourself.

If you're posting that, Gary, but if you're going to be posting some, some of those tips, if you want people to connect with you, I don't know if you want to use it in that way, but you want to share your Instagram?

Yeah, it's my name. It's Gary, G-A-R-Y. And then underscore Farnam. And so it's F as in Frank, A-R-N as in Nancy, A-M as in Mary.

Amazing. And you have a fun way to, uh, to memorize your name, right?

Right. I always have to spell my name, right? So I have one of those names that, you know, we talked right before we re-recorded that when people ask me how to pronounce my last name, I say, well, think of the Barnum and Bailey Circus, but this would be Farnam. And it's a whole different circus, let me tell you.

But, uh, right, right.

Again, how can you associate it in some way to, to remember how to pronounce it? Even what I'd be interested in is if If you come up with a course for busy technical people or busy people that are on phone calls all day where you jump from one call to the next, how to capture more of that during those discussions because sometimes you're trying to prep for the next meeting that's going to be literally right after this one. The note-taking skills that I've been working on through the course have helped me. I'm looking for how to keep that focus, right? How to stay within just the meeting that I'm in right now, right? Not trying to think about the next meeting or 2 meetings from now, thinking back to, oh, what was that thing that someone said? I don't think I wrote that down. You know, how can I capture that here? There's so much demand for multitasking, it seems like anymore, it's almost expected, right? In a lot of corporate environments. So something like that, I think, could be very valuable and I would definitely be interested. So.

We'll definitely have my team schedule that podcast out and we'll do an episode specifically on that. And if somebody happens to be listening to this episode, and has learned some of the foundations and frameworks and tools and strategies around that and applied it towards specifically this area of concern, let us know and maybe we could feature you in an upcoming episode where you could share your results and your ideas also as well. As always, we'll put in the show notes a link to Gary's social media. We'll put a link to the free intro.kwikbrain.com and that link is also in our Instagram if you wanna go through those first few free videos. Link also to the course that Gary mentioned, our quick recall program, which is about 15 minutes a day for, for about 30 days, really add up. The podcast is more for tips, something that you could use immediately. The program and the course that Gary had gone through is a course, which is different than a tip. It's actual training where we're developing these skills and we're going deeper and wider because we have more dedicated time and focus with you. And so Gary, thank you so much again for showing up, not only for yourself and the people around you, but showing up for our community as well. We're celebrating you. You know, I'd love to have you also back and maybe do a part 2 to this conversation. That'd be great. Maybe do a little bit of a follow-up a few months and we could check on how you're applying it towards your tools even more. Birthdays, I know yours is on July 27th. It's one of the things that I think memory is this multiplier. Like when you can remember names and you remember numbers, it just shows you care and that you're interested.

Yes.

And also shows that you're comp— that we're competent. You know, if we're forgetting things in this knowledge economy, and I think it's, it's our expertise is the knowledge, skills, and abilities that we spend is something that, you know, is high currency today. And it's never perfect, you know, and it takes work. That's the truth. There's no magic pill, but there are processes for sure. And there are certainly procedures. And, you know, we live in this remarkable world. And thank you for being a source of light for everybody who's listening. Can't wait to do this again with you real soon.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And thank you so much for just this mission that you have, right? I mean, it's just, it's, it's great. I've read different books and things, but this again, this, this really made it stick, right? And this was fun. So thank you for what you do. Really appreciate it.

We're on this journey together, right? To be able to realize and reveal our fullest potential. And nobody's an island. I had so many mentors that I learned from, so many books that I read, so many seminars that I went through, and I'm learning even more. I think even some of the people who are listening right now will remember What the R is or the Z is or the D is, right? Like I do. Because when we teach stuff, not only do we learn it better ourselves, they say when you teach a child like your nephew, you never see where that butterfly effect, where it stops. That us, you know, flapping our wings here, you being in Illinois and me in New York, you never know in the system that we live in where that ripple effect stops. And then we create a tsunami of change.

Absolutely.

Halfway across the globe because people are listening to this all around the world right now. So I hope you people who are listening right now, you got an idea, you got some inspiration, you learned something to implement. That's always kind of our goal. We appreciate everyone being part of this community. Be limitless, everybody.

Hi, Kwik Brain. It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number two, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing. Because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing: if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: three one zero two nine nine. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question. And I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.

Bye.