Kwik Brain Episode 101: 4 Keys to Changing Your Behavior & Habits

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. The topic and the subject, the question that was in our private Facebook group, which many of you are part of, tens of thousands of people, and so many people liked this question, so that's why I'm going to address it today, is the big one. How do you create change that lasts? If you want a new result in your life, you have to do a new behavior, so you got to change that behavior. In order to change a behavior, you need a set of capacities or capabilities or beliefs. How do you go about changing that? Because if you want something you've never had, then you've got to do something you've never done. Let me say that again. If you want something brand new, something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done before, but most people can't get out of their own way. Isn't that true? They say the average person has about 60,000, 70,000 thoughts a day. The problem is 90 to 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts they had yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. In other words, if you want something brand new, you have to stop doing something old. One must do something new in order to see something new. And the best thing you could do for yourself in this kind of situation is stop saying, I wish this would change, or, I hope this would change, because hope, as we've talked about, is not a strategy. You got to take I wish and turn it into I will. And the secret to making this happen really is neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. I talk a lot about it in this show because the goal is to create new brain cells— neurogenesis— to birth new neurons. The goal is to create new plasticity, like your brain is plastic. And you could create new connections, but the goal is really to make sure you have these connections because that's really a big part of what intelligence is, is making a connection between something you don't know to something that you know and reinforcing it. Now, the key to neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, the essence of change is this: novelty. Novelty and actually nutrition, which is why we cover nutrition so much in past episodes. But the novelty is really what's key. So here's the thing, no matter your age, your brain is like a muscle. It grows through use, through neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, which we talked about, through novelty and nutrition. So try something new every single day. That's why it's important. If you want to create change, you have to try something brand new every single day. After all, we're given this life, right? We're given this precious life. We have one life to figure it out, and it doesn't last forever. Besides, Life could be extremely, extremely boring if we just stay within the lines, if we just stay within the limits of what we already know. So if you feel inspired to be able to jumpstart your habits, your change, I invite you to look at 3 things. I invite you to actually approach this with like, try something new. And most people, they don't want to try something new because it's outside of their script, right? It takes effort and energy to try something new. But if you train yourself to do this— So I recommend you do 3 tries. Number 1, try Try something once to get over the fear of it. You know, so many people, they want to learn how to salsa, they want to learn how to be able to juggle, they want to learn how to be able to take a cold shower or whatever the things they want to do. Because again, first you create your habits and then what? Your habits create you right back. So I say number one, try it once, just get over the fear of it because then you've done it. And then I would say number two, try it twice to begin to learn it. You begin to learn it, you begin to ingrain it. And finally, I would say try it a 3rd time, and the 3rd time is to see if you like it or if you love it or not. You know, usually after trying something a few times, you get— now it doesn't have to be 1, 2, 3. It could be try it once or twice to get over the fear of it, try it a 3rd time, a 4th time, a 5th time just to kind of learn it, and then try it a 6th, 7th time to be able to see if you like it or if you love it or not. Does that, does that make sense? You know, I feel like— so you don't have to know every single day, but the goal is to understand the process of doing this. Now, the real key to making change— think about a change you want to create. Maybe it's in your career, maybe it happens to be in your relationship, maybe it happens to be in your health, maybe it has to do with your learning, right? Think about one specifically, and I want to talk about really 3 keys to change, 3 keys to making lasting, fast-lasting change, if you will. Now, the first C I would say is consistency. Does that make sense? When you're talking about habits, and we've talked about habits in the past, we've talked about it, you know, with James Clear talking about Atomic Habits. We talked about in a past episode, which I recommend, with Dr. BJ Fogg from Stanford University talking about how to create new habits, how to break old limiting habits. So that's very important, but the consistency is key. Whether it takes 21 days or 30 days or 66 days, days or 10,000 hours, whatever it is, the power comes from repetition. So consistency. Remember, if you're persistent, you could attain it, but if you're consistent, you get to keep it. So the consistency is the first key because you can't go to the gym and then all of a sudden you're just healthy and you're fit and strong for the rest of your life. Consistency, right? That's the first C to change. The second C to change happens to be capability. Capability, meaning it's the actual strategy. You— it's the skill, if you will, on how to be able to do something. Because what you're looking to be consistent about is your capability, the skill set that you're going to get. And where does that usually come from? It usually comes from the 3rd C, which is challenge. You get better and more capable at something the more you challenge yourself. Isn't that true? Because with challenge comes what? With challenge comes change. Through your struggles, you develop your strengths. Through— when you lift a weight, it's very difficult. There's adversity and difficulty there. But when you do the hard things, life gets easier. When you just do the easy things in life, life gets hard, right? We've said this before, but if you do the easy things, procrastinate, put things off, then life gets hard. But if you do the difficult things in life, Like, that's your routines, getting yourself to meditate each day, getting yourself to eat well, getting yourself to move every single day, the things we talk about in Kwik Brain and all these episodes, then life becomes easier because you're better. It's not like life got better, you got better, that's the key. But in order to do it, you need to be consistent, you need the capability, and you need to be able to challenge yourself because just like lifting weights, life gives you challenges and all of a sudden, Maybe you get to the other side of that challenge and you're stronger because of it. I mean, don't you have a reference for this in your personal life? That you went through a time that was extremely difficult, you wouldn't wish that time upon anybody, but there's a light. There was a light that came from it. You found a strength, you found a mission, you found a purpose, and you developed, again, strength. And I'm talking about strength a lot, but that's how you develop fortitude. That's how you develop grit. That's how you develop cognitive strength, mental fortitude. fitness and fortitude is through challenge. What I'm going to do right now is I'm going to invite you, because the 4th C, if you will, consistency, capability, and challenge, that brings all those 3 things together is having a coach. I'm honored to be your brain coach because I'm here to help you become consistent, to give you the capabilities, and also to challenge you because a coach gets you to do one more lap around the track. They get you to do one more Set or one more repetition. They challenge you because they— a coach knows that when they push you, that you're going to grow stronger because of it. So what we're doing right now in Kwik Brain is we're creating a quick challenge, a Kwik Brain challenge, if you will. And these are for people who want to level up. There's no cost, there's no fee to get involved, but I want to really talk to the people right now who are ready to make a real change, that maybe you've heard past episodes before From past guests, or maybe it's myself, and I say, hey, now it's time to make a new change. It's to journal, or to do a meditative process, or maybe it's to move and work out, because as your body moves, your brain grows. Or maybe to make a brainpower smoothie, or a brain tea, or to be able to read 30 minutes a day. What we're going to do every single week is I'm going to give you a brand new challenge, 10+ challenges, and each one is going to help to develop this habit of creating brand new habits. And I'm going to challenge you to be consistent. I'm going to give you that capability because we've done a lot of episodes on these habits in the past, and I'm going to challenge you to take things to the next level. Now, this isn't for everybody. This is really for people who want to take knowledge and turn it into power, because we talked about knowledge is not power, it's only potential power. It only becomes power when what? When you utilize it, when you apply it, because all the books All the audios, all the coaching programs, all the online programs, all the podcasts, none of it works until you work. So this is my challenge to you, and we have people listening from all around the world in 180+ countries, you know, that, you know, in social media people are engaged in our podcast and our YouTube and Facebook and Instagram all around the world. But together we can make big changes, and but it starts by making little changes. Because consistency compounds. Consistency compounds. Little by little, a little becomes a whole lot. And so what we're doing is if you go to kwikchallenge.com, K-W-I-K challenge dot com, you could go there and what you're going to get there is every single week I'm going to give you a brand new challenge. I'm going to talk about something that's going to enhance your mental cognitive function to help you become a stronger elite mental performer. To help you become more productive, to have you— help you to have more peace of mind and positivity in your mindset, if you will. Little things that you could practice, and I'm going to challenge you to do that one thing for that week. And so if you want to join us on this movement, if you will, this movement of challenge, go to kwikchallenge.com. It's absolutely free, and what I'll do is every single week give you a brand new challenge. And not only that, I'll give you— A gift. A little bit of motivation also as well, because that's what a coach does. You know, they cheerlead for you, they encourage you, they do the best they can to inspire you, but you have to do the work, right? I'm gonna give you 100%, but I have to ask also that you give yourself 100%. But here's the good news, I'm gonna make it very simple for you. You know, everything we're gonna talk about, things we've talked about previous episodes about brushing your teeth with the opposite hand, or remembering somebody's name, and learning how to juggle, these things. And I'm gonna go through a little bit about the science to show you the why you wanna stick with this challenge, and then I'm gonna give you some motivation and some messages along the way to keep you consistent and on track. Is that fair? So again, go to kwikchallenge.com, K-W-I-K challenge dot com, and then go enter that, and then you'll be reminded every single week, a new challenge and motivation to keep you on track again. And then what I want you to do as part of your accountability is 2 things. I want the proof because here's the thing: it's not about saying it to other people; it's about showing them. It's not about promising people; it's about proving it. And how you're going to prove and be accountable is you're going to take a screenshot during this challenge every single week. So if I if I ask you, for example, to write your gratitude or ask you to read 30 minutes a day, you're going to take a picture of the thing that I'm asking you to do and post it. And then the hashtag, remember, is Quick Challenge K W I K Challenge. And yes. There'll be some fun unannounced prizes and gifts and contests along the way. Many of you know we do these challenges with our, our #OneBookAWeek where we give out Amazon gift cards every week and my favorite books that I'm reading. So we're gonna do all that, but basically we're gonna turn this into a community effort because the good news is you're not alone and change doesn't have to be difficult. It's the little things again that add up to big things. Little things done consistently become big things in the long run, because again, consistency compounds. So the first thing I want you to do after you enter, go to kwikchallenge.com and be part of this and get the, the future challenges and the motivation. The second thing again is taking a screenshot of the proof of every challenge, and then I'm gonna reshare and retweet and repost some of my favorite, and we're gonna have some prize— surprise gifts. And then finally, the third thing I would say is get a challenge buddy, because we know that people stick with something better, especially when it comes to learning, when they have a book club, if you will, or when we do these memory trainings that we teach, whether it's teaching people how to memorize scripts or foreign languages, anything in between. When they have somebody to practice with, they're more likely to fulfill and be accountable to somebody else. And I know that makes sense to you. So what I want you to do is recruit a good friend or family member or work associate, somebody on your team to do this with, Or maybe a group of you. Do the #KwikChallenge, if you will, every single week with us so that way you can make these changes. And I promise you, the end benefit is yes, you're gonna get— have better focus and remember names and do all these things better, but the most important thing I really feel like you're gonna get out of this is you're gonna become a master of change. You're gonna be able to follow through. When you wanna make a new change in your life, you'll have momentum and you'll have references. Because for me, every single month I like to learn something new, if not every single week. Every single month I have— you have your to-do list, right? And I also have a to-learn list. And I feel like the longest living people are people who are committed to lifelong learning. I talk about the research behind this, add years to your life and life to your years. But let's do this together and let's turn you into a master of change. So when you need to have more confidence or you want to learn a new skill, because you're switching careers or you want to go to graduate school or learn a new subject or a new language, whatever it is, you go through it because even if you don't have the competency, you have the confidence because you're like, man, look at all these things over the X amount of weeks that I've already learned and jump-started my habits and learned how to learn to change new things, right? Change your brain, change your what? Change your life. change your life, we could change the world. So go to kwikchallenge.com. All the details are there. Share it with your friend, #KwikChallenge. Take a screenshot of this episode or a picture of this video, post it, and say, I'm in. Do that. That's like a proclamation, a public affirmation, if you will, saying that you're going to do this. Join me. Take a screenshot, put the hashtag, tag me in it, and say, Jim, I'm in. And who else is with me? And then we'll do this all together. We'll create this massive movement of change. Because again, if you want life to be better, we need to be better. But it's not as hard as you think. Little by little, a little becomes a lot. Thank you for watching and listening to this episode. I can't wait to do this challenge with you over the next few weeks. Life will never be the same, and certainly never your learning either. I'll see you soon.