How to Manage Your Mind Effectively 🧠

When we're talking about, we haven't even gotten to time management, I think it's really about mind management. So the M is mind management. You need to manage your mind. And so what I mean by that is our minds are the operating system for our life. It's how we perceive the world, it's how we make decisions, it affects how we feel. And even so, we could touch on any part of your mind, things like our self-talk, right? Our belief system. And I think managing that is important to win the day. Yes, you need a learning management process. You need to focus on the important things, but you also have to manage your mind. And because your mind is your most powerful asset, wealth and otherwise. So things like our self-talk, things like analyzing the lies that we have. It's like these having a lot of, I think it's this idea of having strong beliefs. weakly held. And I don't know who to attribute that. That's not mine, but it's the idea where, you know, our thoughts become more of our reality. But how mindful and intentional are we paying attention to our own thoughts and our own mental programming? You know, even when remembering names, I tell people that your brain is this incredible supercomputer and your self-talk is a program it will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names, You probably won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. And so in Limitless, I talk about lies that we need to unravel around learning, like things like genius is born. There are a lot of people who believe that you're just born with genius or you're not. And, you know, I give evidence that genius is built. And what does that allow you to do? It allows you to say, like, okay, your intelligence is not fixed like your shoe size. you could actually grow it through your own study and discipline and so on. So like another lie is that a lot of people believe is knowledge is power, and it just simply isn't, right? Knowledge has the potential to be power. It becomes powerful when we apply it and we utilize it, right? A lot of people know what to do. They're very knowledgeable, but they're not doing what they know.

Yeah.

And so that's another lie, but it comes down to managing our mind. And so I feel like it's important while the importance we're looking at our values for managing our mind, I think it's important to sensitize ourselves to our self-talk, 'cause it's hard for a negative mind to create a positive life, right? When you're always asking like, why me? Or looking for evidence, why does this always happen to me? Why am I not enough? And then we come up with these answers that are not probably the most useful.

Yeah.

And so also analyzing our beliefs, like our, when's the last time, like, When I was 9 years old, the teacher pointed to me in front of the whole class and said, leave that kid alone, that's the boy with the broken brain. And then I didn't, that was imprinted, that idea that I was broken, because I held onto that for another decade and a half.

I was gonna ask you that, Jim, actually. I noticed that when you mentioned that at the start, that is a powerful message to be given at that age, right? So you talk a lot about this empowering mindset, positive self-talk, How did you go about changing your self-talk after such a powerful and influential experience? Um, I mean, did you believe you had a broken brain for many years?

I, I believed it. And so then my question became, how do I fix it? So my mind management— and maybe it was inspired by my parents, like my parents, um, They're not the wealthiest by any stretch or the smartest, or they're not the most spiritual and they're not the most health-conscious, but they're just really just, I'm blessed because I feel like I won the lottery. They're just very good people. They're hardworking and they're extremely kind, right? And I just, to honor my parents, I feel like when I was growing up, and I'm the oldest of 3 siblings, I wanna be a good role model for my brother and my sister also as well. 'Cause those are my value system, my family, right? In terms of love. And so I guess what got me through this is I wanted to be valuable like we all do. And so it got me through those tough times, but it wasn't easy, right? Like the daily saying to yourself, I would say like, oh, 'cause I'm broken, I'm broken, I'm broken. But then I started asking, well, broke things, you could fix broke. Can you fix something that's broken? And then I asked, well, how do I make this better? How do I fix this? And then I started getting answers slowly. And with those answers came action. And so I feel like the things that happen to us, you know, this idea where it just maybe it's not happening to you, it's happening for you, that there's this gift through struggle. Like my 2 biggest challenges were learning, and because of it, public speaking, because I never knew the answer. So don't call on me in class. If I had to give a book report, I would be terrified 'cause I just wasn't as smart as the other kids.

I mean, it's remarkable to hear that because if you go on YouTube type in your name, there are countless videos of you on stage.

Public speaking on learning.

In front of hundreds of people in really nice venues, and you are giving really commanding and very grounded performances on stage. And the reason I share that, Jim, is I think that's empowering. Because if you can change from being the kid with the broken brain to being this confident, sought-after speaker. I think that journey is inspiring for people who might think at the moment, well, I've got negative self-talk. Yeah, I'm scared of even going to my work and having to present in front of my colleagues, right? There'll be people listening right now who feel like that. So I guess the question is, how do they start changing it? Is simply, you know, asking some of these questions we've already Covered. Is that how they do it? Is just becoming aware of it? I mean, how— what do you recommend?

So I think awareness is a starting point for any kind of change. Um, I would also say that a reminder, as we're mapping out this process of transformation, wherever you are, where you want to be, that the people you look up to, every professional was once an amateur, right? You know, every expert was once a beginner, because everybody starts at that place, right? And so I would remind people that our struggles can become strengths. And again, my 2 biggest challenges were learning and public speaking. And now all I do is public speak on this thing called learning. But adversity can be an advantage because it forces you to grow. And with challenge, again, comes change. And I think also on another level, we're best suited to support The person we once were, right? So what I feel like when I'm talking, I'm talking to that 9-year-old that was going through, that was in despair, that didn't believe in himself, that had learning difficulties, that was called broken. And I think we're all really well suited to support the person we once, we once were. So I think all change begins with a choice. There's a quote in Limitless that says, life is the letter C between B and D. Where B stands for birth and D stands for death, and life, C, is choice. And in these difficult times, they can distract you, or these difficult times, they can diminish you, or these difficult times, they can develop you. We decide with the choices that we make. And one of those choices we make is in the area of our mind, like what we're thinking, what we're gonna choose to believe, those paradigms and perceptions, frameworks that we have in the world that informs what we're gonna do and how we're gonna feel. Yeah. But it is interesting to reflect looking backwards that not everything makes sense when you're going through it.

Yeah.

It's been my experience, though, with hindsight, of course, that when you look back, that maybe things— I wish this for so many people listening, that I hope if you're going through struggles that you can't— you're going through a storm, that when you look sometime in the future, you look back knowing why it happened the way it did. And to another level, maybe you even are grateful certain things happened the way they did.

Yeah.

Like, it's like post-traumatic stress we talked about last time, post-traumatic growth. That's this psychological phenomenon that you went through adversity you wouldn't wish upon anybody, but you wouldn't change it for yourself because you found, you discovered something, you discovered a purpose or a mission or a meaning or a strength or a trait that you didn't realize that you didn't— that you— yeah.

I mean, that word choice, I think, is one of the most important words for us to sit with.

Yeah.

Everything is a choice. You know, you can be someone who thinks you are, you know, a victim to the world, right?

Yeah.

Or as you say, you could say that actually it's happening for me, not to me. And that is a choice. Right? You can justify it the other way and go, no, that's not true because you don't know my life. Sure.

Mm-hmm.

But it, it's not about whether we've had a hard start or challenges in our life. Everyone, or many people, will have a totally valid story of that. It's not, it's not saying that's not true. For me, it's about what good is that disempowering story doing for you? How does it help you, right? Yeah, you had a bad start in life. I have real sympathy for that, okay? I wish you didn't. But at the same time, if you want to change things, you have to think about that C-word, choice, and go, I have a choice with how I look at this. What is the upside? What have I learned that I would not have learned had this not happened to me? And once you start practicing doing that, I think journaling's a great tool for people to do this on a regular basis. You start to do it automatically. Like, I really feel, Jim, I've got to the point where most adverse situations, I can now pretty quickly flip it and go, okay, but what's the upside here?

Where's the gift?

Where's the gift?

Yeah, what can I learn from this?

Because there always is. It doesn't mean it ain't hard.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? That no one's saying it's not hard, and it isn't, you know, causes sadness and all kinds of things. But, but there is a choice, and you can choose to live life with that mindset.

So that I would categorize all this under, under mind management. You are, you're managing your mind and not at the effect of what's going on in your environment, right? You're determining your own reality with the choices that you're making. And part of the choices we're making is what to focus on, what we're asking ourselves, like, where's the gift in this, right? And like, what can I learn from this? This is managing your mind. And I feel like, again, a negative mind can't create a positive life. And not that I wanna be all just positive all the time either, right? You have to look at reality. Sometimes you can be so positive that things aren't gonna work out and you don't take the necessary actions.

Yeah.

When your health or your family or business or whatever. And so it's, again, it is making those choices and the choices, I want to remind people also, there's only 4 choices you can make. When I was thinking about this the other day on the train, I was thinking, if you want to create a new result in your life, which most of us do, you have to make a new choice, right? And I believe all behavior is belief-driven, right? You need a belief that says that's even possible. But going on the choices, you can only make— there are only 4 fundamental choices to make a change. You either could stop something, you could start something, you could do less of something, or you could do more of something. That's literally the only things you could do. Because if you did the 5th thing, is not do anything, that's insanity, right? Doing the same thing expecting a different result. So you want to create a new result, let's say it's wellness. You gotta stop something, start something, do less of something, do more of something. You could stop smoking, right? You could start meditating. You could do less binge-watching television sitcoms, or you could do more movement throughout the day, right? And so, like, all those choices, and I like to— I'm not saying this is easy, but I'm saying it is pretty straightforward and simple. And so, when I'm looking at how to make my life better, I could ask myself these kind of questions, like, what is this? Is this good for my brain or is this bad for my brain?

Mm-hmm.

Something simple. Or, you know, the questions that you're asking yourself, you know, where's the gift in this? And then I could ask, what can I stop? What can I start? What can I do less of? What can I do more of? And those little things add up to big things over time, 'cause that consistency compounds.

Yeah.

And so I think that's the importance of mastering your mind, because it gives you awareness and it reminds you that you have agency.

Yeah.

Right? That you don't have to believe everything that you're thinking.