How to Achieve Goals in Life FASTER

So let's start with my name. My name is Jim Kwik of Kwik Learning. I help people learn quickly. Kwik really is my last name. I didn't change it to do what I do, but the name is my father's name, my grandfather's name. My life was pretty much planned out. I had to be a runner back in school, which is a lot of pressure when it says Kwik right on your shirt. I have to be very careful of driving because the worst name to be pulled over for speeding on your driver's license is the name Kwik because you're not going to talk your way out of that speeding ticket. And I get to do my dharma, my mission in life, which is teaching people how to learn quickly. And again, it isn't number one skill. Like, think about this, and you could put it in the chat. If there was a genie, and this genie would grant you one wish, but only one wish, what would everyone wish for? What would you all wish for? More wishes, right? Limitless wishes. If I was your learning genie, and I could help you become an expert, like very, very proficient, a master at any one subject or skill, what would the equivalent be of asking for limitless wishes? Would it be coding? Would it be marketing? Would it be negotiation? Would it be health? What subject or skill? Yeah, learning. Because think about it, when you're a limitless learner and you could focus, you could read faster, you could remember things, you could think more clearly, solve problems. What subject can you apply that to? Everything, right? Medicine, money, marketing, management, Mandarin, music, martial arts. Everything in your life gets a whole lot easier. And so what we're gonna do, and this is very cool, the studio here provided us with a digital whiteboard, so I encourage you to take notes. I'm gonna show you the framework to become limitless. If you've seen me present this or you read Limitless, what I suggest you do is learn it in a different way, like you're hearing it for the first time. Does that make sense? Sometimes we have to empty our cup to put new information in. And ask yourself 3 questions. And these are my dominant questions when it comes to learning. Number 1, how can I use this? Number 2, why must I use this? And number 3, when will I use this? And again, I think what keeps us from a level of success or mastery is this belief that, oh, I know this already. And having coached some amazing athletes and and actors and academics and entrepreneurs, I realize that genius leaves clues, that it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. But the people who are the best, how many of you believe they lean into the fundamentals? They double down on the basics, right? So I'm going to challenge you to do the same. So I've never used this board before, but it's digital. This is the Limitless model I'm going to share with you. And so the opposite of being limitless is limited. So I want to make this extremely relevant to you. In what area of your life are you— do you feel limited, like you're stuck in a box? You could put in the chat if you like. But what I want to do is I want to, I want to deconstruct this and really make the science of success a whole lot easier. And the goal is you control the controllables. You control the controllables. And what you could always control are 3 forces. I'm going to share with you you them now. So limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you currently believe is possible. So I'll say it again. My definition of limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you believe is possible. And we could redraw the borders and boundaries of possibility with the proper education and the proper training, right? It was Benjamin Franklin that said, an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. So 3 questions I ask: how can I use this? Why must I use this? And when will I use this? Scheduling it. We schedule doctor's appointments, investor meetings, parent-teacher meetings, but we don't schedule our own implementation of what we're learning. I honestly think for every hour you spend learning something, we should spend an equal hour applying it, right? Because knowledge by itself, you know this, is not power. Yeah. A lot of people know stuff, but their life doesn't reflect that. And, the quote in Limitless says, life is the letter C between B and D. And, I have this on my wall in my office. You can write this down. Life is C between B and D, where B is birth and D is death. Life, C, choice. I think you would agree that our lives are the sum total of all the choices we've made up to this point. Right. Right? Who are you gonna spend time with? Where are we gonna live? What are we gonna focus on? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna feed our mind? What are we gonna feed our body? And I believe these difficult times, they could distract you. These difficult times can diminish you, or these difficult times, they could develop you. We decide, and there's these choices that we make. So here are 3 choices. Think about an area of your life where you feel like you're in a box. Like, where do you feel like you're in a cube? Because the opposite of limitless is limited, being stuck. Where do you feel like you're stuck in life? Now, it's interesting because there's a story we did a podcast about that says one day there was a very busy traffic day and a truck driver wasn't paying attention and goes underneath a bridge. But his truck was too high, and the bridge was too low. And the driver— the truck got stuck, right? And you can imagine all this traffic started to build behind this truck. And he tried to put on the gas, and he went a little bit further, but he got even more stuck. And then when he went in reverse, he couldn't get unstuck. And a lot of people started getting out of their vehicles. And there was just all kinds of panic and frustration. And, an emergency crew came and they were like, okay, we don't know what to do. We're going to have to destroy this truck. And, there was a child there watching and the child said, why don't you just let the air out of the tires? And then, there's this aha, the elusive obvious. And, all of a sudden, the truck lowers and they were able to back out the truck. But I find that sometimes life is— and be able to see things through a new perspective, be able to see things through a new point of view changes everything, right? And so here's the point of view I would love for you to have. Think about an area where you're not making progress, where you feel limited. It could be in your health. It could be in your relationship, your happiness, your level of fulfillment. It could be in your income, your impact. It could be in your reading speed. You feel like that you're stuck. Your memory, you feel like it's fixed and you're stuck. Now, this box by definition is 3-dimensional. And when I'm teaching this, I would actually, to learn it faster, I would be thinking about somebody you wish was here watching with you and participating with you and ask yourself, how would I teach it to them? Right. And so, one of the best ways of learning something is to teach it to somebody else. You take advantage of something called the explanation effect. When you learn something with the intention of explaining to somebody else, you're going to learn it quicker and better. All right? So, these 3 forces is 3-dimensional. I'm going to illustrate it here. So, there's a circle here. Is that a circle? Okay. Another circle here. And then another circle here. All right. So how many of you are familiar with like a Venn diagram? A Venn diagram, 3 intersecting circles. Sometimes we use it in different frameworks and mental models. So there are 3 M's that you could always control to be limitless. And I know many of you know this. because you have our book or you've listened, you maybe have joined one of our courses, but just like try to see this at a new— with fresh eyes like that child. So 3 M's to become limitless. And these 3 things you could always control. Now, the last one I'm going to tell you are the methods. So it's kind of like Mickey Mouse, 2 ears and a face. These are your methods. So the methodology is one thing, but a lot of people know what to do, but they don't do what they know. Because they haven't tapped into the first 2 M's. And the first M is your mindset, your mindset. And I define mindset as the set of assumptions or attitudes you have about something. What are your attitudes and assumptions about something? So for example, you could learn a great method on how to be healthy or a great method on how to make money. But if your mindset is— it could be like money doesn't grow on trees, or money is the root of all evil, or to make money I have to hurt people and take advantage of them. So they're not going to use the methods they learn on creating financial wealth if their mindset is like, I don't deserve it, right? If you think you can or think you can't, either way you're right, right? And so how do you change that? Because if you self-sabotage, that's a mindset issue. You take one step. How many of you ever taken a step forward? And find yourself taking 2 steps back, right? Because you feel like you're not capable or you don't deserve it, that it's possible for that person, but it's not possible for me. So mindset has to change. Even at events, people come to me all the time knowing I'm a memory coach, and they say, Jim, they pull me out in the lobby in private. They say, Jim, I just have a horrible memory. I'm not that smart. I'm just too old. And I always say the same thing. If you stop me somewhere, I'll say the same thing to you and say that— I'll say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. They're yours. So this is mindset. So again, though, you could have a limitless mindset and have limitless methods, but still be stuck in this box because you lack the second M, which is motivation. Right. A number of people ask to improve their motivation, to motivate themselves, because you're not motivated to get out of this box even if you believe it's possible, mindset, and you have the correct methods. You believe it's possible to read 3 times faster. That's the average reading speed that we graduate individuals in just 21 days. We triple reading speed with better comprehension. But, if their mindset is that's possible and they have the methods because they've gone through One of our trainings, but they're not motivated to do it, right? And, I'll talk about motivation, but I'll give you the 3 keys to motivate yourself. It's the letter P times E times S, 3. This is the key for limitless motivation in your life. If you want to motivate yourself to meditate, motivate yourself to read faster, if you want to motivate yourself to work out, if you want to motivate somebody else to invest in your company, Mm-hmm. motivate your kids to clean their room, motivate somebody to buy your product or service. There are only 3 keys. The P stands for purpose. And what I mean about purpose, I mean that without a reason, you won't get the reward. Reasons reap results. Reasons reap results. And I don't mean a cognitive, a mental reason. Many of us know why we should do these things. But I mean, you have to feel it because we're not logical. We are, we are biological. You think about dopamine, serotonin, endorphins. We are this chemical feeling soup. And if it doesn't touch us emotionally, we're not likely to do it. And it's the difference between something being attainable and sustainable. You could use willpower to get yourself to read every day or work out, but that's tough because it's, it's, it's, it's If you want sustainable drive, find purpose. I'll give you an example. A few years ago, I was walking in my neighborhood and I saw somebody I recognized, but for the life of me, I didn't remember who it was. And, it's very embarrassing as a memory expert to not know or remember somebody, right? When he opened up his mouth, I heard his voice, I knew exactly who he was, but he looked completely like a different person. I mean, he looked younger. He had this glow. He had this energy about him. And the backstory is this individual is extremely unhealthy and he almost took pride. It was like his identity, right, of like being unhealthy. He would take pride in his vices and his smoke, all the things that he would do. And I was like, I need to know, like, you look amazing. What are you doing? And he tells me what he's doing and I'm like, Our friends, we've been telling you that for years and you never did any of that. He was like, yeah, but he found purpose. He tells me that he came back from a business trip and when he got home, his daughter was crying hysterically. And when she stopped, it was because he found out that she had this nightmare that he died and wasn't there for her. And Immediately he found what? Purpose. All right. So it went from his head to his heart, then it went to his hands. Right. The success formula is head, heart, hands. Right. You have your thinking, your feeling, and your doing have to be aligned. And then it becomes effortless. You don't— there's no friction because it's just who you are. And so finding purpose is very important. Like for me doing this, even when Limitless came out in 2020, just a few years ago, I had this book deal for years and years and years, and it was my first book. And, I don't talk about this publicly, but I got in a car accident in 2018 and I almost died. And, has anyone had a near-death experience before? I think most people struggle with near-life experiences, but that's a different conversation. But, I could have died and maybe I should have died. When I— that gave me a point of view or perspective and found more purpose because I was holding back because I want to help people, but I don't feel like I need to be known for it. I don't know if anyone struggles in this area. Like, I want to help people, but I don't need the attention for it. And that's kind of been— after that, I thought about legacy, what I would have left behind, and I really regretted not having a book. So, when I got back, I signed that book deal that's been in my inbox for years and years and years, but I found purpose. So, things you could ask yourself to find purpose are things like, who's counting on you? Who's counting on you to be your best, to follow through if that's part of your value system in terms of helping other people that you love? What are the— what would— what— Pain, and I think pain could be actually very useful. When you lean into it, it's like one of those things where life is difficult for one of two reasons. Either because you're leaving your comfort zone, like as a personal coach, as like a trainer tries to get you to do one more lap around the track or one more rep, right? Because that's where all the growth happens. So life is difficult because you're leaving your comfort zone, or life is difficult because why? You're staying in your comfort zone, right? And the comfort zone is a nice place to visit. But I could tell you nothing grows there, right? Comfort zone's a nice place to visit, but not much grows there. And so your mind is— your brain is like a muscle. It's use it or lose it. And how your brain grows is through 2 things: novelty and nutrition. Same thing with your physical muscles. You have to give it novelty, you work it out, and we are going to exercise your brain. You know, we're going to dedicate a day to speed reading. Because how many of you ever— how many of you are really good at buying books and they sit on your shelf unread and become shelf help, not self-help, right? So, the skill and the habit of buying a book is different than the skill and the habit of reading a book. And so, we have, you know, out of Stanford University, he runs a lab there on behavioral change, Dr. BJ Fogg, who wrote the New York Times bestseller Tiny Habits. One of his students created, co-created, co-founded Instagram. And, think about how habitual Instagram is, right? But, he's going to share with you strategies on how to have better brain health when it comes to your habits, how to be a faster learner, limitless learner based on your habits, and also how to dissolve habits that hold you back, right? First, you create your habits, then your habits create you. And, a big part of that though, is the habits we have of the mind. You have 60,000 thoughts, but there's certain thoughts that are more habitual. And there's certain thoughts you could ask to find more purpose, right? Like, who's counting on you? Or what's the— what— like, regret was the thing that motivated me to write Limitless. And, you know, you could do this mental thought experiment. It's like life is growth. Let's be honest, growth can be Hard. Change can be scary, but nothing is as scary and hard as being stuck somewhere you don't belong, right? In this box, right? So again, growth, learning could be hard, it could be scary, but nothing is as scary and hard as being stuck somewhere where you just, you don't belong. And so, you know, taking these steps, one step in another direction, Just think about it. If you're going this way and you take one step this way, all of a sudden you change your destination or your destiny in your health. Little things, little by little, a little becomes a lot, and we'll show you how. So, P is purpose. The E is energy, right? Because when you're low energy, are you motivated? Not really, right? Yeah. Let's say we have a We have an 18-month-old and teething, so he's, you know, sometimes he has some bad nights. And if I didn't sleep the night before, I'm not very motivated to exercise or to write, right? And so you have to— and here's the key for energy. Please write this down. I don't have energy. I generate energy. You don't have energy. You generate it. Just like a big part of this limitless learner philosophy as a first principle is taking nouns and turning them into verbs. Like, I think the next 3 days for you, if I was to encapsulate this in a word besides limitless, is about transcending. Transcend. Think about the word transcend, ending the trance. Either the The trance, the hypnosis that we're in through marketing and media saying all fear-based that we're not enough, we need to be fixed, that we're broken, whatever it is, or the trance we create on our own, the self-hypnosis by the words we use. I don't have energy. I don't have motivation. I don't have focus. I don't have a good memory. These are not things you have. These are things you do. If you have it, it's a noun. But when you turn it into a verb, it gives you what? It gives you your agency back, right? There's— you don't have a memory, you do it, right? You don't even have energy, you do it. There's a process for energizing you, getting a great sleep. And then finally, you can have limitless purpose and limitless energy and still not be motivated 'cause you lack the last part, which is S3. What does S3 stand for? Purpose. You could put it— you got it, Lynn. Small, simple steps. So the other— so people either aren't motivated for one of 3 reasons if you're going to deconstruct this, either because they lack purpose. If they don't have a reason, if you don't have a reason to remember someone's name, you're not going to remember that person's name. Because here, even when you forget somebody's name, like you don't remember all names, but you don't forget all names. When you remember someone's name, you're probably motivated. That person could be good for your business, or maybe you're attracted to that person or whatever. There's some kind of inherent purpose or motivation. You have a reason to, you know, or people don't follow through and be motivated either because they lack purpose or they lack energy. If you don't have energy and you're exhausted, exhaustion will make a procrastinator out of anybody, right? That's why you don't have energy. You create it and you generate it. And the third reason that you're not motivated If you don't lack purpose and you don't lack energy, a third possible reason is that thing that you're going for is too big. It's too intimidating. And maybe it's so abstract that it's like it confuses you. And a confused mind doesn't do anything. A confused mind doesn't do anything. So what's S3? Small, simple steps. And how do you find your small, simple step? It's simple. You ask yourself this question, and I would write this question down. This is a question I ask myself ten times a day. Whenever I feel stalled or stuck, I ask myself this question: What is the tiniest action I could take right now that will give me progress towards my goal where I can't fail? What is maybe somebody could put in the chat also? What is the tiniest action I could take right now? The operative word is. Now that will give me progress towards this goal. I'm getting closer to my goal where I can't fail. And so maybe we know exercise is good for your brain. We've done many podcast episodes on this. When you exercise, you create BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factors, which is like fertilizer for neuroplasticity. But if you're not exercising, maybe it's just out of your routine. It's not part of your lifestyle. It's too big. And S3 is putting on your running shoes. Or just getting to the gym, right? That's a small, simple step. If you can't get your kids, we did a podcast episode with, you know, one of the top biological dentists talking about oral health and brain health, the connection beyond brushing, right? It was like tongue scraping, oil pulling, and when we got to flossing, you know, we're talking about how do you get kids to floss? Maybe it's too big of a jump in terms of their habits. Remember, first you create your habits, then your habits create you. You create your habits of eating right, reading, exercising, prioritize your sleep, and then it comes back to you, right? It creates you back. But maybe flossing a child's tooth— its teeth is too much. Get them to floss one tooth. That's a small, simple step. Does that make sense? Yeah. You know, if you've seen photos with me online with Elon or Oprah or Buffett, whoever, people always want to know how we bonded. We bonded over books, right? You read to succeed. If somebody has decades of experience, like many of our experts and they put it into a book that you could sit down and read that book in a few days. You could download decades into days. Huge advantage. And, reading is the best exercise for your brain, bar none. Reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body. But, if reading 30 minutes a day, which by the way, even if you're not a quick reader, you haven't gone through our programs, you could still get through a book a week in 45 minutes a day because the average person reads about 4 hours a day. If you could double your reading speed, save 2 hours a day, What's 2 hours a day over the course of a year? That's a lot of mental math, but it— like, let's say you save 1 hour a day on something ubiquitous like reading. That's 365 hours a year. How many 40-hour work weeks is that? Over 9. That's like 9 weeks, 2 months of productivity you get back saving just 1 hour a day. But maybe a small, simple step, if you're not doing it, is just opening up the book is a small, simple step. Or reading one line, and nobody's going to stop at one line, right? So inch by inch is a cinch. Yard by yard, it's just too hard. So that's the Limitless Model. It's mindset, motivation, and the methods you're using. It's your head, your heart, your hands, and you control the controllables. You can't control the economy or politics or technology, but what you could always control— you could always control your personal economics. You can't control maybe healthcare and policy, but you could control your own healthcare, right? You control the controllables. And the most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing. I have that on my wall also. The most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing. It's about mind management, not time management. So these are the 3 Ms, and there's also built into this 3 Is that I want to highlight for everybody. There's where mindset and motivation cross over. There's this I, and that's inspiration. What's— if you watch an inspiring movie or inspiring speaker or read something or what— inspiring, it changes your mindset about what's possible, right? And, it gives you a little bit of motivation. So, that's inspiration. Where mindset crosses over with method, There's a second I here, and that is ideation. Ideation is you just thinking about it. So, your mindset, you believe it's possible, and you know what to do, the methods. So, it's an idea, it's an ideation, but you lack the motivation. Does that make sense? You lack the motivation, so you're still stuck in that box. It just stays an idea. And finally, where motivation and methods crossover, you're motivated, you have purpose, energy, and you have this drive and you know what to do, the methods that you have a third eye, which is implementation. If somebody is motivated and they know what to do, then they're going to implement, right? But they might still be stuck in this box because they're only going to be able to act and create results around what they believe is possible, their mindset. Does that make sense? Yes. Awesome. All right. And by the way, this right here in the middle is where all 3 M's and 3 I's converge. That I is integration— mindset, motivation, methodology. Because when you do that, it's just integration. It's who you are. You're not fighting against yourself, right? So what I'm saying here is don't downgrade your dreams to meet the current situation. Instead, that's what most people are doing out of fear, right? Everything going on right now with economics and everything, out of fear, you're into survival mode. What if instead of downgrading your dreams, you upgraded your mindset, your motivation, and your methods to be able to meet those bold, audacious goals? So, this is the Limitless Model. So, what I do for goal setting is I set a goal, whatever goal happens to be for you, Financial goal, a health goal, a reading speed goal, a memory goal, whatever it is. And then I say, okay, what is the mindset I need? What's purpose, energy, small simple steps to get started? And what is the roadmap or the methodology to reach that? And even when I'm coaching a client, I'm looking for the bottleneck. Like, do they not believe it's possible? Is it a mindset issue? So I know what to tackle. Or is it a motivation issue? Do they not have purpose or energy or breaking it Or they're overwhelmed. Break it down small, simple steps. Or are they using poor, outdated methods of reading? Like, when's the last time you took a class called reading? How old were you? Put it in the chat. How old were you? Like 6 years old? So the difficulty and demand has increased a lot, what you need to read and study, but how we read it is still that of like a 6-year-old, right? And we have to close that gap. And that's part of what a limitless learner does. They have confidence because they have competence. And I don't know anything more important to have confidence than your own mental abilities, right? That you could walk into a room, meet 20 strangers, and leave saying goodbye to every single one of them by name, right? You just show up different. Because how many of you have a product or service, uh, that you have to offer to the world? Raise your— raise your hand. Or you're an entrepreneur, aspiring entrepreneur. How many of you have a relationship with a human being? Right? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And what's the message we send to somebody when we forget their name? That we don't care, that they're not important, right? So it doesn't matter what we say after that. That's why memory is a multiplier. And just like I forgot are 2 of the most costly words, I remember opens up doors like you can't believe. When you can easily remember client information, product information, give speeches without notes, Remember names and faces, whatever you have to become an expert in, because we live in this expert economy. Knowledge is not power. It's not just power, it's profit today. And the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn.