In this solo coaching session, Jim Kwik examines how overthinking and the fear of making mistakes lead to analysis paralysis and a shrinking of one’s potential. He contrasts children’s natural willingness to fail and learn with adults’ tendency to avoid errors due to concern over others’ opinions. Kwik shares personal anecdotes—working with Jim Carrey, caring for seniors, and reflecting on his grandmother’s Alzheimer’s journey—to illustrate how external expectations generate regret and limit growth. He introduces several mental models: Stephen Covey’s habits of “sharpening the saw” and “begin with the end in mind,” a three‑try rule (try once to overcome fear, twice to become competent, thrice to test enjoyment), and the “OLD” framework for handling mistakes (Own it, Learn from it, Don’t repeat it). Throughout, he emphasizes that mistakes are feedback, not failure, and that owning and learning from them is a super‑power that frees individuals from the need for external validation. The session concludes with a call to live without regret, focusing on how we love, laugh, and learn rather than on others’ judgments.
Chapters
I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik, and in this session we are going to talk about overthinking and making mistakes. You know, I believe that thinking is good, but overthinking could end things before they even start. A lot of people struggle with analysis paralysis. They want things to be perfect, so they never take the So it ends before it even starts. It's because why? We're fearful of making a mistake. We don't want to look bad. We don't want to be criticized for our actions. And remember, modeling children who are wonderful learners. Children aren't scared of making mistakes, right? They understand that mistakes are stepping stones to something bigger or something better. If you've ever Watched a child learn how to walk or learn how to talk, they fail most of the time. They fall, they fumble. How many times does a child fall in order to learn how to walk? Hundreds and hundreds of times, but never after the 75th time do they say, okay, that's it, I'm just not going to walk. Children don't do that. They keep on going until they get the result. But adults, when it comes to learning and trying new things, thinking in different ways. They'll try it once and they're just like, oh, because they didn't get it perfect, then they just stop and they shrink. And in this world, you don't wanna shrink, right? You don't wanna dim your light just because it's shining into somebody else's eyes. You wanna inspire them with your grit, with your grace, but you have to overcome this fear of looking bad. You know, I get to work with a lot of Hollywood actors, Many of you know, if we follow each other on social media, I get to work with individuals like Jim Carrey. And when I was training with him at his home, we were taking a brain break and we were in his kitchen making his favorite brain foods. And while we were doing that, I asked him a very simple question. I was like, why do you do what you do? Why are you so like extreme on camera? And he was like, Jim, I'm glad you asked. The reason why I do that is because I wanna give people permission who are watching, I wanna give them permission just to be themselves. He calls it freeing people from concern. That's really his religion. He wants to free people from the concerns of others. Because when you're always trying to mold yourself to fit into a box and you're living your life that way, then you are limited by other people's expectations, by their opinions. And that's one of the fastest ways to slow down your progress, slow down your growth. slow down your thinking. And so here's the reality, and it's not fun to think about, but I want you just to imagine if you're fearful of other people's expectations or their opinions or how you're gonna look. I spend a lot of time with seniors. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's, and going through that process, I spend time at senior centers. I speak to caregivers, and part of it is I love hearing stories because, you know, people have an incredible amount of history through generations. I love learning from that wisdom, and I love helping people to polish off their own memories. But the other thing I hear in those situations is I hear a lot of regret, things that they wish they would have or could have done. And life and living towards your dreams, it could be scary, but you know what's scarier? Regret. And at that point, you hear the biggest regrets people have is somehow they shrunk their life to fit into the expectations or opinions of somebody else. But Here's the reality: if you fuel your life by the expectations and opinions of other people, you're gonna run out of gas. That's not what you want to do, because in our final days, when we're, when we're in that box, that coffin, right, there's not a lot of room in there for possessions. And you could have all the toys, and that, that's good for you, but in that box, there's also not a lot of space for regret. Right. And that's the challenge. You do not want to live your life that way. And I would say from a thinking perspective, another mental model to think about is begin with the end in mind. One of my favorite books, another book, they're all my favorite books, is by Dr. Stephen Covey. He wrote the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And the 7th habit, by the way, is sharpen the saw, that if you have all this wood to cut, and you have a dull blade, you want to sharpen that saw first. You don't want to struggle and suffer and use up a lot of time and focus and energy and have all that angst and pain when you could sharpen your saw. That's smart, doing that first. That's what you're doing right now. You're investing yourself to sharpen your mind, sharpen your saw, sharpen your thinking, right? And so that's what we're doing right now. But another habit of highly effective people is begin with the end in mind. What do you want people to say about you when you pass? I mean, it's not a comfortable conversation, but I'm your coach here. I don't wanna tell you what you wanna hear. Maybe put yourself in a situation where you're doing this thought experiment where you're thinking, how do I wanna be remembered? You know, and then live your life that way. And part of it is, if you know you're gonna have regret at the end of your life, then why not do that now? You got one life, one life. Why aren't we running towards our dreams like we're on fire, right? This is the time to do it. All right? And so one of the things that keeps us from doing that, other people's opinions, other people's expectations. Because at the end of our life, other people's expectations, their opinions, our fear of that, none of that's gonna matter. What's gonna matter is how we lived, of how we loved, how we laughed, how we learned. Those are the things that are gonna matter. So why not do that now? Forget about other people's opinions, 'cause everybody's gonna have an opinion about your life. So you might as well live your life. I want you to have this thinking belief that there's no such thing as failure. There's only feedback. You don't fail. There's only failure to learn something. And feedback is the breakfast of superheroes, right? You want to get that feedback so you can adjust. And so when you're making mistakes, the attitude I would have is this: I would try something at least 3 times. Try it once, to get over the fear of it. Try it again to get decently good at it. And try it a third time to see if you enjoy it. And when it comes to making mistakes, you make mistakes, but mistakes do not make you. A lot of people are fearful because that becomes who they are. It defines them. And your mistakes do not define you. How you respond to your mistakes define you. So I would recommend 3 things you do when you make a mistake, all right? Mistakes obviously are opportunities for growth. Opportunities to step up to another level. So you don't have to be proud of your mistakes. You could be proud how you handle your own mistakes. So when you make a mistake, and this is part of my thinking, and you could adopt this if this serves you, I think about three things. I want to make this mistake old, O L D. And of course, it's an acronym so you could remember it. The first thing when you make mistake, and invariably. You do, because if you're a human being doing anything, you make mistakes, right? It means you're trying. So first of all, congratulate yourself for making mistakes. It means you're trying something new. But when you do make a mistake, make it an OLD mistake. O-L-D. What does the O stand for? The O stands for own it. You want to own that mistake. You make a mistake, own it. Do not blame somebody else for that mistake. You take responsibility for it. The L in OLD stands for learn. You want to learn from your mistakes. That's why you make mistakes, to get feedback so you can make better decisions moving forward. And so why do you make mistakes? You go back and you analyze and you reason and you put on your different hats and you look at it so you can learn from it. So you get that lesson. And finally, the D in OLD. The O is own the mistake. L is learn from it. The D is don't repeat it. Don't repeat the mistake. Because if you're doing something, let's say you are in a relationship and you start Dating this person, you make the same mistake and then you do it again and again. That means you didn't learn from it. Or if you learned from it, you didn't really get it because you're repeating it. Some people tend to make the same mistakes in their business. And there's this quote that we're all familiar with about insanity, right? What's insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. I don't think that's insanity. I think it's just bad learning, a bad memory, because you're not learning from the mistake and you're repeating that mistake. So I would say the D is don't repeat it, because if you do it once, it's a mistake. But if you do it constantly, then it's a decision. So don't repeat the mistake because that is insanity. So I'm giving you this tool as a power, a superpower to free yourself from the expectations of others. Remember this, don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from. This is the thing when it comes to performance. You can learn from people, Right? You could get feedback, you could get advice from mentors, but remember, your life is your own and it's your responsibility. Now, this was a heavy lesson, but I wanted to introduce you this concept because I feel like a lot of our thinking is shrunk, or we shrink in our behavior because we don't want to fully express ourselves because of the fear of making mistakes, the fear of looking bad to other people. But remember that child. In order to learn to walk or to talk, they fall. And it's the strength of getting up that makes you strong to accomplish your next goal. It's not the point of falling. The people who fall the most and get up are stronger than people who never fell. You have to take those steps. I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik.
