DAILY HACKS To Instantly Change Your Life & BECOME SUPERHUMAN | Jim Kwik

I had the brain injury when I was 5 years old and I suffered all through elementary school, all through middle school, all through high school. It was like a good 14 years. A lot of it was this thing where it's even as a young age, maybe I was pretending that everything was fine and I'd be struggling. It's like that metaphor of a duck on a pond and you see it's all calm and relaxed, but underneath it's just hustling really, really fast.

Yeah.

and people don't always see what's below the iceberg, but for me, I struggled privately. My parents, because I grew up with these challenges and I didn't have a lot of people to talk to, because when you feel like you're broken, you don't connect with a lot of people. On top of everything, I was also painfully shy. I was introverted, but I was also shy and very reserved. I would always sit in the corner. Honestly, I've never— I've never talked about this publicly, but I ask everybody what their superpower is. I feel like that my superpower growing up as an insecure kid who felt like he was broken and taught that by adults, that my superpower was being invisible.

Whoa.

I didn't want to be seen. I ultimately did want to be seen and I want to be heard like most of us and accepted and acknowledged, but I didn't want the spotlight. I would do, for example, My parents instilled this work ethic about working hard, and so I would do a book report, even though it was more difficult for me, to the point where I'd be like, okay, I have it, I was done, but if a teacher asked me in high school to present it in front of a class, I would actually lie and say I didn't do it.

Wow.

I would take a zero because I was so terrified of being in front of a group of people, and I would throw it out on the way out of class, and it was really scary, but my parents always held that there was more, that there was purpose, I was taught that there's a reason that I was going through these challenges. I mean, my mother actually went into— became a special ed teacher because she just really wanted to help because nobody knew. Really?

Because of what you went through?

Because of what I went through.

Wow.

They were very caring like that, but the challenge is we don't know what we don't know. They did the best they could to be able to help me, but what they did instill in me was that there was a reason, that through going through struggles, just like when they came to this country, all of us go through struggles, right, in our health, our relationship, whatever it is. struggles come strengths. People don't talk about this as much. I probably have post-traumatic stress from it, going through brain injury after brain injury. There's also post-traumatic growth, which you know. It's not as widely talked about, but there's some people that go through immense amount of trauma and difficulty and challenge, but they come out of it actually more empowered. They say to themselves that because of going through this, I found a new strength. I found my superpowers. I found a new meaning in my life. I found a new level of commitment. I found a strength, a mission, if you will. A lot of them attest that they wouldn't trade that experience, no matter how painful it was at the time, for anything. I find that growing up with reading challenges, and I couldn't read for an extra 3 years, I pretended how to read.

Whoa.

It's like the imposter syndrome. It's like they have this image of how they want to be projected to the world, and then they have this image of what they fear they are, and then they have their real who they are. I think a lot of people are suffering and overloaded and overwhelmed and they're depleted because they're trying to hold these images in place and then be themselves also as well in different contexts. That's why I love you because you are the same on camera and off. There's a congruency. There's an authenticity that's there. I feel like a lot of people expend unnecessary amounts of energy trying to hold up this image of their ideal self to the world, and then they have this image that They fear it's going to be revealed to somebody else. Growing up as a kid who couldn't read, I would pretend I understood things. Teachers would explain things and I didn't want to be the only one who didn't understand and I would pretend, but in private, I was really suffering and struggling. It's one of those things where you wonder why. My 2 biggest challenges growing up were learning and public speaking.

That's so crazy.

Which is the universe has a weird sense of humor because that's what I Right, exactly. ...my mission now. It's interesting how things work.

How did you push through that? As somebody who's seen you speak publicly, you're so good at it. You have so much energy and enthusiasm and projected confidence, even if you're secretly overcoming something. How do you go through the dark time of feeling like you've been identified as the kid with the broken brain, Really struggling, truly, how do you get your self-talk going in a positive direction? Everything would be pushing back against you.

I think it's even— I even get nervous with doing things like this, and you know that. Even being on camera or having my picture taken, there's still this residual. I always get butterflies, incredible amounts of butterflies before I go on stage every single time. How I get through it, we talked about We've talked about previously about mindset and about the importance of having a growth mindset. I always talk about the second G for me is grit.

These are the 3 Gs of the superhero.

Right. Yeah. I think having a powerful mindset, being unstoppable, or just having the ability to go and succeed, whatever success is for you, you have to always be growing because if you're not growing, then you're just backsliding, right? You also need a level of grit. I think grit, just like growth, is a muscle. It's something that you need to sharpen through challenge because through the challenge you get all the change that comes from it. I would say that if I'm effective having an impact on stage, and we all have a stage of our life whether it's on a physical stage or just going through our day, Right. that I challenge my grit and my ability to persist. I feel like that the most successful people on the planet that are having the level of impact that they want to, have to go through challenges, and it's just like the hero's journey that we've talked about many times. How I get myself through it, I monitor my self-talk because I think that's important. I feel like with a name like Kwik, you have to be a runner, right? I had to be a runner back in school and to be careful getting speeding tickets and everything else like that, but I remember I was reading a book years ago on preparing for a marathon, and one of the chapters, again, was on the psychology of it, and it said this verbatim because I'm the memory expert. Your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is a program that will run. If you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you programmed your supercomputer not to. I always tell people that— now, I don't think the brain is like a supercomputer. I think it's a weak metaphor for what it is because this is like a living computer that could do so much more and has different capabilities. I would say that Your self-talk is important, and it is the program that we run. I always tell people to keep it positive, keep it empowering, because your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk.

Mm-hmm.

You have to be careful what you say to yourself because it's this unconscious command. I would be very careful when I get nervous or I feel like I'm— I think some of the most successful people live at the edge of their limits, and they play there also as well. Whenever I feel in my nervous system, I feel like I can't do it, then I feel like I really must do it. Because I feel like how we do anything is how we do everything.

When did you have that realization that you could overcome some of the fears by knowing what your motives were?

You've had many guests address this, and I really do feel— and congratulations with Mel and Simon, those videos are like hundreds of millions of people watch it. I feel like I was having this conversation. I did a talk in Silicon Valley, and afterwards Bill Gates comes up to me and I asked him what superpower he could need one, and he's like, the ability to read faster. I was like, oh, I could totally help with that. I believe in reading, and I know you're an avid, avid reader. We share that commonality, leaders are readers. We were talking about the future of education, and I was taking the approach from adult learning theory and brain science, and he was approaching it from more technology and scale. Somebody who was listening asked the question saying, is there anything missing? What's missing in theory and technology? We were talking about it and we came to the conclusion it's understanding human motivation because motive matters and what drives us. I always tell people that there's a success formula. I subscribe to it. I call it H-cubed, that it goes from your head to your heart to your hands, especially in the personal development space or what they teach about goal setting. You could affirm things in your head or think things in your head or visualize things in your head, but if you're not acting with your hands, There's something that's missing. There's an incongruency there. What I tell people is check in with the second H, which is your heart, which is the symbol of emotion, the energy of motion. I feel like that's the fuel that fuels the car that gets you to take action for something. I do believe what got me through it is figuring out what my why was. I don't want people to suffer the way I did. If I could do anything about it, for me, it's like no brain left behind. Right, because I lived with that identity for so long. My message to people, whether it's on stage or on the podcast or anything, is that we are more than what we're demonstrating, that we've been sold this lie that people are taught through school. When I do these demos and I'm on stage, memorize 100 names and words and numbers forwards and backwards, and it appears effortlessly, I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you. I do this to express to you what's really possible because the truth is— Everyone can do this too, and so much more applied towards creativity and focus and flow and problem solving and thinking and really overcoming the biggest challenges of their life and maybe even the world. The challenge is we were taught a lie. We were taught a lie that somehow our intelligence, our potential, our learning, our memory somehow is fixed. Our creativity is fixed. Our thinking is fixed like our shoe size. What we've discovered, as you know, more I mean, about brain science. In the past 2 decades, we've discovered more than the previous 2,000 years. What we know is that we're grossly underestimating our own capacity to be able to grow, to be able to contribute, to improve our intelligence and our influence and our impact. I want to pull the veil behind and just say, hey, this is about transcending. This is about ending the trance, ending the trance that we're not good enough. That we're not smart enough, that we're not this genius, and telling the truth. The truth is people could— we're faster and we're smarter than we think, and not just to be able to rote memorize things, but be able to really solve significant challenges, and maybe that these challenges that we're going through are the lessons that we need to learn the most. Then some people who learn those lessons feel compelled to be able to share that voice with other people. It's not just one candle. We just can set things ablaze.

What are some of the key problems that you personally want to solve that you think we face as a society? What are those major movements for you?

A lot of these conversations you and I, we've had with our mutual friend Peter Diamandis over at XPRIZE. I was at the very early stages of their education literacy prize when they first launched it. I think for me, My platform is education, and I feel like that growing up, if anyone who's watching this feels like they're overloaded, overwhelmed, and they can't keep up, I always tell people that I don't think it's completely their fault. It's just we all grew up with a 20th century education that prepared us for a 20th century world, which at the turn of the century was working in factories and farms and assembly line, and our education system was mirrored to that. It was assembly line, one size fits all. cookie-cutter approach towards education, teaching us things about what to learn, math, history, science, Spanish, but all things we could find online nowadays. What do you need to be able to regurgitate that information for? It was about what to learn but not how to learn and how to think for yourself, how to solve problems, how to be creative, all the things that you can't outsource to automated or technology or you can't outsource to Asia. Our value in this world is really our creativity. Creativity, because that's not something that's easily outsourced, our ability to create value, be creators, take our vision and turn them into reality, take the invisible and make it visible. Where are the classes on that, on how to be able to live your best version of yourself? That's why I love this and the conversations that we have and the conversations that you're bringing out to the world, because nowadays we live in this— see, here's the thing. I get to work, you mentioned, with SpaceX and Elon and such, and rocket scientists and all these— Think about that. We're living in a world of autonomous electric cars and spaceships that are going to Mars, but our vehicle of choice when it comes to learning, it's like we're choosing a horse and buggy. That's our choice. We wonder why, wow, this is taking so long. This is so hard. This is so difficult, but it's not our fault. We just weren't prepared for this world that we're living in right now. They say that if Rip Van Winkle, the gentleman who slept for decades of slumber, if he woke up today, the only thing he would recognize is our schools. That's not a slight against teachers. My mother's a schoolteacher. My aunt is a college professor. I love those individuals because they're some of the most hardworking individuals that I know, and I get to train a lot of them, but it's a systemic issue just like many challenges. It doesn't grow, and it hasn't evolved as much as the rest of the world has. I love this because right now classrooms, they don't have 4 walls. I mean, how many people are watching this from how many different countries right now? You never know who's listening on the other side, and that motivates, inspires the heck out of me because what if someone right now is watching this on their smart device and they're in the middle of a third world country and they become the next Malala or Elon Musk or what have you?

Right.

That's what really juices me. Education, I feel like a lot of people feel like that when they graduate school, their learning is done. In fact, the 2 big dips in cognitive performance is usually when people graduate school, and the second one is when they retire from work. Often when people retire, their mind, they feel like their body is not too far behind either because of that connection.

Have you thought about what a new education system would look like?

My approach has always been going directly to the student, whoever the student of life happens to be. In terms of curriculum, what I would change, just because I wouldn't focus so much on dates. I think it's good to be well-read because I think that perspective is really important, but I would focus more on functional, usable tools that would help people excel in today's day and age. The ability to create, to be able to think differently, leadership skills, the ability to work and manage teams, collaboration tools. I think all those would be very important. Any of the learning methodologies that we publish on how to focus and how to concentrate, The reason I focus on memory a lot, even though there's a lot of information online, because people are like, oh, why do I need to memorize all this stuff if it's available online? That's a valid point. There's 2 reasons I would say. Number one, I feel like because people aren't memorizing things, they're losing their ability to remember things because they're outsourcing their brains to their smart devices. Everything is kept here so they don't have to be able to keep it here. The challenge is, I believe that the mind is more like a muscle as opposed to a supercomputer that's use it or lose it, grows stronger with use, but a lot of people aren't using it as much as they used to. Think about it. Before technology, how would you have to remember personal history and all your lessons? You would pass it around, share it over with stories like this. That's why I love this kind of context. There'd be a fire here and we'd be sharing this and it'd be part of who we are. I feel people are losing that ability. Storytelling is so important to be able to teach, interpersonal skills. We know that IQ is erroneous. This idea where you have a number and it's yours for the rest of your life and it's fixed and it can't move and it accurately describes your value in society, I think that's flawed. I think that we have multiple intelligences. Generally in the United States, we reinforce 2 kinds of intelligence. It's verbal linguistic Growing up, that was like the SATs. It was verbal and math. If you're not good at either one of them, it's like, hey, that determines whether or not you go to a school and everything else like that. What about interpersonal skills? That's got to be at least as important, your ability to connect with individuals, which you have in spades. What about, besides interpersonal skills, what about intrapersonal skill, like just self-awareness? Because as Gary Vee talks about, I think self-awareness is a superpower, like awareness of yourself, like your own condition and what motivates you, what drives you, your own beliefs, identity, your values.

Do you think that can be cultivated?

I feel like— I think— I do believe in a combination of nature and nurture. I do believe people are born with a certain level of talent, but as— it's cliché, but it's also true that hard work will beat talent if talent doesn't work hard. I do believe you could refine and train this. I think when it comes to children, that it's harder to model and manage behaviors like getting them to do something or stop doing something, but I think what we could do because of children growing up, they're incredibly— they have their mirror neurons and they learn through imitation and such. I feel like that they'll— what's easier with modeling or being a good role model for kids, and this goes for coaching or any kind of relationship with a human being, is really to be an example. Instead of trying to manage certain microbehaviors, like the thousands and hundreds and thousands of different behaviors that your team has or your children have, I would say that it'd be better to really focus on communicating the values.

You said that behavior is belief-driven. Is that what you mean? Focus on giving them the belief system that's going to drive them?

The belief system and the values. I feel like in order for people to transcend, to be able to— to end the trance that we talked about earlier, that a lot of people are just trying to change a lot of times. I just did a podcast on habits, how to be able to adopt new habits and also delete and get rid of, break bad habits. A lot of people always want to make it, usually make a change on behavior. They want to get themselves to work out. They want to get themselves to meditate. They want to get themselves to read more each day. They want to get themselves to X, or they want to stop some behavior. They want to stop smoking. They want to stop eating this food. They want to stop I always tell people, stop checking your phone the first hour of the day. I love that. That's sacred time for me because for me, I think that if you want to be an elite mental performer or a real-life superhero, you don't want to start off by checking the phone. We talked about this in the past because you're training yourself to be reactive. You're getting your dopamine. You're frying your nervous system with all these likes, shares, comments, and everything else like that.

You've said, if I'm not mistaken, you sell your sovereignty if you start by checking your phone. I love that so much. Because you're reacting and firefighting.

to everyone's— everything that everyone wants. You're not really setting— you're not living— you've heard this many times, right? You win the first hour of the day to win the rest— win the day, right? Anything you want to stop, so let's say you want to stop checking your phone in the morning, then there's certain— that's a behavior, right? There's so many other elements to be able to change because most behaviors don't stick. What I'm thinking about When I want to transform or transcend or make a real positive change, I'm looking at all the other areas of ourself. I'm looking at, for example, our environment. Are people setting up their environment to win? Change doesn't just happen at this level of behavior, but you have to change the environment. For example, if you want to stop eating a certain food, it helps to be able to not have that food in your home.

Mm-hmm.

You change the environment. If you want to read more, it helps to help set up your environment. where you have the books readily available, where you're going to read it because they perform. How I approach habit change is this area of motivation and this trigger. You want a trigger to help remind you to do the behavior. Are you setting up the environment in a way that triggers the behavior that you want? Not only the environment, it's like the when and the where, but it's also— behavior is also the capabilities because a lot of people want to change a behavior, but they're not training in the abilities. What I love about that. A lot about your work and your passion is the area of being able to ability those acquisition, new abilities for yourself and also that could also benefit the rest of the world, but most people aren't training those habits and those capabilities. Also, another level of change that we need to address, let's say someone's watching this and they have something they want to change and it's not sticking, then maybe it's the environment, maybe you could check about your habits, but maybe it's your beliefs and your values. Some people will not get themselves to read every day because they don't value reading every single day. Some people won't— let's say the behavior they want to change is— we did a podcast on how to remember names. I could teach them step by step on how to remember the name of most people that they meet, yet they won't do it because they don't value it, or because that's not important to them, or they don't believe that they can. Just like we talked about earlier saying your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is the program it runs. If you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you programmed your supercomputer not to. There's a belief that enables that. When I say all behavior is belief-driven, if you want to do this behavior, whatever it is, journal, whatever it is, then you need a belief that allows that to happen because that's the program that allows it.

How do you get that belief? Because you're going to feel like you're faking it. That's where most people stop, right? They think, okay, I get it. I hear what Jim is saying, that if I am able to shift my belief, then I can get a different behavior, but I don't believe it, so now I'm just sort of faking it. How do you help people overcome that?

Right. Some people approach it like— there's this quote where they fake it till they make it, right? My thing with belief is when I do trainings in groups or online, my favorite way of changing a belief is getting them to do something they never thought they could do because it opens up another possibility.

Like what?

For example, in 1954, Roger Bannister, he broke the 4-minute mile, which is amazing. Throughout human history, nobody could run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Now, if you look into it, how he was able to do it is he would visualize himself crossing the finish line, looking at the clock, and it says 3:59, because he knew that success is an inside-out process, that first it had to happen in here in order for it to happen out there. Dr. Wayne Dyer has a famous phrase where it's not, oh, I'll believe it when I see it. It's like, I'll see it when I believe it, because it's the opposite.

Right.

I always like modeling the outliers where most people just I dismissed them. I was like, well, what's going on there that allows this person to get this kind of result? With Roger Bannister, he saw it in here, be able to produce it outside just like any innovator or inventor or writer or any creator. What was interesting is after that, what happened? Nobody could do it from the beginning of humanity. All of a sudden, one person does it. What happens after that?

Everybody's doing it.

Yeah, everyone starts doing it. That's the thing. Now, what happened? Was there a big change that year? training methodology and nutrition, or no, it was a change of belief, right? Because the belief back then was if you ran a mile in less than 4 minutes, not only would you die, it was your heart would explode in your chest. Think about it, and I'm a runner, right? That would keep me not just running, that wouldn't keep me from running in 4 minutes, that would keep me from running, period.

Right.

My thing is that was a change of a reference. I shook up a belief. My goal with people when it comes to learning is get themselves to do something they never thought they could do, and then it opens up another possibility. It literally opens up their nervous system for something, what else could be possible. Now, I would also say that it all plays together where it's not easy necessarily just to change a belief overnight. Now, that could be a belief because it's like a meta-belief about what beliefs are, but people, there's technologies like Inception, like a dream of a dream of a dream. But I do believe that we have more power to influence our thoughts and our beliefs. There are a lot of tools and techniques out there that are resources. When I grew up, we didn't have any— we had no money. I had no education because I was very learning challenged. I didn't know anybody. I feel like it's not— when people are— that's where they'll go though. When there's a stopgap between where they are and where they want to be, they'll say, oh, I don't have the money, or I don't have the education, or I don't have the intelligence, I don't have the network, or anything else like that. What you know, for all incredible success you've had and the value you've created for the world, is that it's not about resources because we know a lot of people who didn't have any resources that were able to impact the world. It's about our internal resources. What I'm saying is optimizing our environment, optimizing our behaviors, our capabilities, our beliefs, and our values, and our identity, that at the highest level, our identity, because you can't just change your belief or your values or your behavior even if you don't believe you're that kind of person. That's why I always go to the superhero mythos because I want people to claim that identity. I call it the superhero you, that version of ourselves that we're not waiting for Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman. It's like you are Wonder Woman. You are Batman. You are Superman. It's just we have to commit ourselves to be able to unleashing that.

Dude, I'm a huge believer in identity driving I have a hard time explaining to people though how to adopt a new identity. How have you done it in your own life?

I think that's the best way to say it. My identity, obviously this is a work in progress. I would say that I would start with the— they call it the 2 smallest words in the English language, but they're the 2 most powerful words in the English language. It's I am. I am, because whatever you put after that determines your destination or your destiny. I think your identity is who you believe you are. I feel like when we're talking about playing to the edge of our limits and really playing there and living in that place where we're stretching, I do believe, and I get inspired every time I see your Insta story. It's like 4:30 and you're working out. You're doing your work, but that's who you are. You don't have to fight it because you can't imagine yourself not doing that. That's the level that I think is what's most important. I would think about going through an exercise, and I've done this with friends. I've had them sit, or in groups we do these conferences and such, and I have people pair up with someone they don't know. What they're going to do is they're going to do an exercise, I am, and they're going to talk about— they're literally going to fill in the blanks for 3 minutes until I call time.

Wow.

You have to go like— you could do this right now. If you were to fill in I am blank, I would say, I am a student. I am a teacher. I am a son. I'm a— all this.

Right.

Eventually, I'll get to a point where I don't know what else to say, and that's what the real interesting answers come out of because it's a great way for networking and knowing somebody else, but it also shows us this really big tapestry of our life to the point that we've gotten to right now where we— could I relate to these aspects of ourselves? I think it's a nice exercise when we talk about self-awareness being a superpower, really knowing who we think we are, because if we don't believe that we are a public speaker or we're a great parent or we're a great learner or genius, then we'll never be able to reach our full potential because that will always be the ceiling that we bump up against. Also, when I'm talking to individuals and I'm interviewing them on our podcast or just talking to individuals like this, I would be thinking about especially high performers because I think that genius leaves clues and I believe that it can be replicated if you're willing to put in the work and the learning and the discipline to be able to do that. Then I want to know really, I want to know their beliefs. I want to know what they value, because if I don't know that, if I'm just working on step-by-step hacks and everything else, it won't stick because it's missing a huge part. I want to model their behaviors, their values, their beliefs, and also who they think they are that allows them to accomplish those amazing things in their life.

What are some of the clues that genius leaves?

It's interesting when I'm talking about these levels of change, the identity level is the who.

Mm-hmm.

You know all the 5 W's and the H we learned back in school. The identity is who somebody is. When we're talking about beliefs and values, that's the why, why they do what they do. When we're talking about capabilities, that's the how. That's the habit, the skill acquisition. When we're talking the behavior, that's the what, the what they're doing. Then when we're talking about environment, that's really the where and the when. I'm always going back, if I want to create change, create a new habit, create a new level of learning for somebody, I'm addressing those different levels. If I ignore one with somebody else or myself, then it's not going to stick because you're not going to have that congruency where it's going to affect— where it becomes second nature. Going back to this, I think if I'm modeling genius and genius leaves clues, I'm thinking about, okay, where are they and when are they doing these things? Certain people are early birds. Some people are night owls. I could teach people— I teach people how to read one book a week. I really think leaders are readers. In order to stay competitive in today's day and age, if somebody has decades of experience and they put it into a book and you can sit down and read that in a few days, download decades into days, I mean, I'm preaching to the choir for everyone who's watching, but that's a superpower. That's a huge advantage. I'm thinking about— but some people, when I'm telling them to practice, and I get these real results in 30, about 4 or 5 weeks where it's permanent, where they can read 300% faster with the same or better comprehension, essentially read something in 20 minutes that takes It normally takes normal people an hour.

Right.

But the reason why— but you have to practice. But some people will practice at inopportune times of the day and they won't get the same results. Part of it is self-awareness, knowing what they call your chronotype, when's the optimal time to do this. Depending on your body type, there's certain times of the day it's better to work out. There's better times of the day to be able to make love. There are better times of the day to be able to read, to check email, to ask for a raise. I would think about geniuses. They find their element, their sweet spot, and they set up their routines and their rituals throughout the day to be able to align with the time when they're most productive.

Right.

If they don't have a lot of energy in the morning, working out is probably not as good as doing it some other time. The when and the where and setting up your environment for success because all your triggers are there that allow them. I think geniuses set themselves up. For example, they have their laptop, but they only use their laptop for work and it's anchored. That's part of their environment. It's anchored to get them into flow states to be able to write or be productive. They don't use their laptop to watch binge on Netflix. They have an iPad that they use when they do that because that's the state that they want to anchor for that. They don't use that iPad to do work. Setting up your environment like your bedroom. We just did a whole episode on sleep hacks and how to optimize your sleep because that's a big personal challenge for me for many years because I had suffered from sleep apnea. It was a breathing disorder. I stopped breathing 200 times a night for at least 10 seconds, which is the equivalent of somebody coming in and just choking and suffocating you 200 times a night.

Exactly.

I would actually— the reason why I'm so adamant about productivity and learning hacks is because for the longest time, for literally 5 years straight, and you know this, I've slept about 90 minutes to 2 hours a night total. You know how you feel when you get one bad night's sleep and where your focus is, your energy level, and I get these horrible migraines. It's forced me to double down in my practices in terms of I have a limited amount of time. I have to focus on the things that really matter, resources and stuff. Anyway, going back to this, my bedroom is sacred space. I don't do work in there. I keep it because that's my trigger to be able to rest, go into parasympathetic space. I set up my environment so I have my blackout curtains, I have my grounding pad, so it's to optimize my restful sleep that I do get. Environment, genius leaves clues. They set up genius environments for themselves. Then the behaviors, most people know because they're intuitive. These people are investing in themselves. They're investing in self-care. I always tell people that self-love and self-care is not selfish. A lot of people, they're there for their friends and their family and their clients and everybody else, but they're not refilling their cup. I think that we have to be grow givers, meaning we grow so we have more to give to other people, so we have more impact with other individuals. The behaviors are reading each day and putting together your to-do list. I think having your not-to-do list is so important. Having been sleep deprived for so many years, I think a lot of people— I'm super sensitized to it, but I think one of the success rituals people should have is just going through and keeping a consistent not-to-do list. I think the most successful genius-level individuals, one of the clues that they leave is their not-to-do list is bigger than their to-do list. They don't check their phone in the morning. They don't take in— everything is hell yes or it's hell no. That's their filter system. They say no to good so they can say yes to great. The behaviors, then you have the habits. Then you have the beliefs and the values. Beliefs and values, you know, because I watch— this is one of the reasons why I watch your show, because I'm just hearing all the time you're eliciting these amazing beliefs and values from achievers in every area. It's amazing. You have Wyclef, you have all these amazing individuals, but you see that there's a pattern that's there. There's an art, but there's a science to it there, and there's an art to it and how they express themselves. Then I also do believe that some of the most successful geniuses, and I say geniuses, not just— I'm not talking about IQ. I'm talking about an incredible artist. I'm talking about an athlete. I'm talking about an advocate in some area, is they're clear about their identity, about who they are and who they are to the world. I know what they do commit is they do the work and they're committed to lifelong learning. I feel like that learning— I always tell people, and we've had this conversation, that if knowledge is power, then learning is your superpower.

Mm-hmm.

I think it's a superpower that we all have. It's just that we're not taught. Recently, we had Quincy Jones in our audience and I had to pull him on stage. I was just like, I have to ask you, We Are the World and Michael Jackson and Oprah, how did you overcome these challenges, these problems that you had to be able to create this legacy? He looked at me. He's like, Jim, I don't have any problems. I'm like, what do you mean? You're 84. You have no problems? He's like, no, I have puzzles. I was like, wow. That little shift of vocabulary changed everything for me. Yeah, because puzzles are like riddles. You could solve them. There's answers for it. It was a change of perspective. That was the thing about growing up with superheroes, reading these comic books late at night when I was so impressionable, is for me, a superhero more than anything represents hope. Do you know what I mean?

Oh, yes.

That one person can make a difference. A lot of superheroes go through a lot of challenges. When you think about the most popular superheroes, they're all orphans like Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Spider-Man. They all lost their parents and they all threw these big challenges, but through it, they found their dharma. They found their mission. I find that if someone's watching this and they haven't found it quite yet, maybe— I have a belief that their mission and that people's mission, their purpose, and their path is looking for them also, but most of us aren't sensitized to it. Because it's coming in different forms and we're not open to it as much. My thing when it comes to success rituals and high performance and making an impact is that we all have that sovereignty. We all have that power. Whenever we put it out there and give it out to somebody else, like we're a thermometer, the metaphor I always talk about, it's like we're either thermometers or we're thermostats. A thermometer, you think about the functionality of it. It just reflects what the environment is giving it. It just reflects the temperature and stuff, but a thermostat is different. It sets a standard, it sets a goal, it sets a vision, and the environment changes along with it. I feel like our happiness, our joy, our level of fulfillment, our success is all dependent on where we put the locus of control. I feel like we have more power than we realize in these cases. It's hard because we have to fight media, we have to fight marketing that's always telling us about all the things that are going on in the world, but we live in an abundant universe. We talk about the matrix. You know, which pill people are going to take, and that determines everything. And every single morning, you determine what color pill you're going to take.