Learning How to Learn | Jim Kwik

My favorite toy growing up as a child was a fire engine. And I remember the exact moments, one of my earliest memories. And I'm curious for all of you with the topic of memory, what your earliest memories are. I was given this truck, this shiny red truck by a firefighter who came and, and they, they did their amazing work on this apartment building that I, that I was in. And I was just enthralled. Firefighters for me represented modern-day superheroes. They have their uniforms, they have their utility belt, they go into danger, they offer hope and real help. When I was 5 years old, I As Sanjay mentioned, I was in elementary school in kindergarten, and the teacher mentioned that there were fire trucks outside. And we were on the first floor, but I couldn't see outside the window. And so one of the students had this idea of grabbing their chair, because we're, you know, we're so tiny, and putting it by the windowsill. And we all did that. And I got to see these firefighters, you know, in action. I was just really just in awe again. And I lost my balance. And I went headfirst into this radiator. And I was rushed to the emergency room. My parents said after that, I was never really the same as a child. Before, I was very inquisitive. I was very energetic. I was very curious and creative. But I really shut down. And where it really showed up was in school. I didn't understand like the rest of the kids. Teachers would repeat themselves over and over again, and I would pretend to understand, but I didn't really understand. I had a poor memory, a very distracted focus. It took me 3 years longer just to learn how to read, which was very, very frustrating and embarrassing also as well. I remember I was slowing down the class one day, and I was being teased for it, a little bit bullied, and the teacher came to my defense. And but all I remember was she pointed to me and said, that's the boy with a broken brain. And, you know, she was trying to— the intent was, I believe, is pure, that this, this, this boy has some challenges, leave him alone. But all I registered that day was like, oh, I'm broken, because I didn't, I didn't know that. And adults have to be very careful of their external words, because they become a child's internal words, right? And so every single time I did badly on an exam or a quiz, I or not picked for sports, and this was really all the time, I would always say, oh, it's because I have the broken brain. And around that time also, I had— my parents immigrated here and had many jobs, so my primary caregiver was my grandmother who took care of me, and she started showing early signs of dementia at that time. So I was going through my challenges, and then, you know, I didn't understand when she would call me by my father's name or she would repeat herself. he would say something he just said, you know, seconds ago. And it's very confusing as a child. When I was in school, in elementary school, I remember they took one of my class— the teacher came in and made an announcement and said, I'm very excited, class. You know, you're doing exceptionally well, and we're forming this group for all you exceptional students, and it's called MASP, M-A-S-P, and it stands for More Able Student Program. MASP. And there were 2 of us that weren't picked for this group. And so me and Joey, we created our own group called LASP, Less Able Student Program. And that was my mindset back then. Fast forward, I was fortunate enough to get into a local university. I thought freshman meant I could make a fresh start. And I took all these classes. I wanted to show the world, show my Show myself, make my parents proud that I could really do it. And I actually started doing worse. So I didn't know I had to just work harder. And so I just lived in the library. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep or exercise or spend time socializing. And after weeks and months doing this, I ended up passing out late one night in the library. And I fell down a flight of stairs, I hit my head again. And I woke up in the hospital 2 full days later. And at this point, I was about 117 pounds. I'd lost all this weight. I was malnourished, hooked up to these IVs. And I— it was the darkest time in my life because I felt like this is so unfair. You know, I'm working so much harder than everybody else. And I just— this is— I can't do it. It— when I had that thought also, though, the nurse came in with a mug of tea. And it had a picture of a pretty smart person, it was Albert Einstein, and it had this quote on there that said, the same level of thinking that has created your problem won't solve your problem. And it made me think, like, what's my problem, my real problem? I think my problem is I'm a very slow learner. You know, I was told that, and I experienced that. Well, how do I think differently? Well, maybe I could learn how to learn. And I took— I asked the nurse for a course bulletin for, you know, next semester's classes. And I looked at all the classes. And I noticed that after going through a couple hundred pages, there were all classes on what to learn, important subjects, math, history, science, Spanish, but there were zero classes on actually how to learn those subjects. There was no class on concentration or creativity or problem solving or, or even remembering. I always thought it should have been the 4th R in school, right? They teach you 3 Rs, reading, writing, arithmetic. Obviously, spelling is not one of them. But remembering, right? Retention. Socrates says there is no learning without remembering. And so I set my schoolwork aside because that wasn't very productive. And I started studying more about— I wanted to solve this riddle: how does my brain work so I can work my brain? And I started, you know, studying the latest at the time. This was 30 years ago. Brain science, adult learning theory, multiple intelligence theory. I wanted to find out what did the ancients do before there were printing presses, how they passed on memories. And after about 2 months, a light switch flipped on. I started to understand things for the very first time in school. And with that, I couldn't— I felt a little bit angry because there were simple things that I could have done or your children could do. I realized that it's not how smart you are or how smart your kids are. It's not how smart you are. It's really how are you smart? Right? And so I, I couldn't help but help other people. And I started tutoring. And one of my very first students, she was a freshman, she read 30 books in 30 days. Can you imagine? Not skim or scan, but she really read them. And I wanted to find out not how she did it. We published the, you know, we do programs on speed reading and memory enhancement and focus. And I want to know why. I'm always interested in human motivation. Like, why do some people know something But they don't act on it, right? We've learned a lot the past few days. And normally when I open an event, if I speak earlier, I'll— I teach strategies on how to remember quickly facts and figures and formulas and, and be able to process it. But towards the end, I want to teach a model of how to implement these ideas. And because how many of you have books on your shelf you haven't read yet? And become shelf help, not self-help, right? How many of you came here to like to have a better memory? How many of you forgot why you came here today? Can we get real? Have you ever walked into a room of your own home and then just forgot why you're there? Anyone feel a little absent-minded, like senior moments are coming way too early? Maybe you read a page in a book, you get to the end and just forgot what you just read, and you go back and you reread it and you still don't know what you just read, right? Or remembering people's names. How many of you have met somebody maybe the past couple days and you forgot their name already? Right. And so I, in our experience the past 30 years, and we have a lot of data because we have students online in our academies and over 190 nations. And I realized that there's reasons why some people follow through and some reasons why some people don't. For this young lady, she, she was in an interesting situation. Her mother was just diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given only a couple months to live. So, the books she was reading were books to save her mom's life. So, she was very highly motivated. I'm going to talk about the science of motivation. And I wished her luck, you know, good, you know, prayers. 6 months goes by, I don't hear from her. And I get a call from this young lady. And she's crying hysterically. And when she stops, I find out they're tears of joy that her mother not only survived, but she's starting to really thrive. The doctor's really not sure what— why, they were calling it a miracle, but her mother attributed 100% the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from all these books. Now, in that moment, I realized 2 things. I realized that if knowledge is power, learning is your superpower. That if knowledge is power, your ability to learn that is the superpower. And I also realized what my mission was. And so that moment, I dedicated my life every single day to build better, brighter brains. You know, no brain left behind. I believe you change your brain, you change the world. So, what I want to show you really quickly was a model. We have an amazing amount of completion rates with our programs. And I imagine with you, in some situation, you might feel limited. And so, I want to share this quick framework. You can draw it out if you like or put it on your phone. Think about an area of your life where you feel limited. Where do you feel— limitless is not about being perfect. It's about advancing and progressing. beyond what you currently are demonstrating or believe is possible. Think about an area of your life where you feel like you're maybe in a box. It could be in your income, your impact, your relationship, your personal health. Now, that box is by definition 3-dimensional. So, the 3 forces that contain that box, and I represent it with this Venn diagram. I never have taught this on stage before, and I never use slides. So, A Venn diagram. So the first circle that you have to address to become limitless is— I'm going to give you the last one— are the methods. A lot of you know, a lot of people know what to do, or— and this could apply micro or macro. This could apply for yourself. This could apply to your team. This could apply to a community, a country, you know, or the world. A lot of people know what to do. They know they should meditate, eat the best brain foods, and so on. But why don't we do those methods? There's lots of methods. We have unfeathered access to the world's information online, right? Podcasts and YouTube. We need first to address, I realize in our trainings, our mindset. Now, mindset, very simply, are the set of assumptions and attitudes you have about something, right? A big part of that are your beliefs. I believe that all behavior is belief-driven. This has happened a lot the past few days where people ask me, you know, Jim, I'm glad you're here. I watched your videos, I read your book. I have— I just have a horrible memory. I'm just too old. And I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. You know, if you fight— if you truly understood how powerful your mind is, you wouldn't say or think something you didn't want to be true. Right. And so what falls in their mindset are things like what you believe is possible. What you believe you're capable of, what you believe you deserve. Because someone could learn a great method, in my case, on how to remember names. But if their mindset is, I'm just— I have a horrible memory, they're still gonna be stuck in that box. Your brain is like this ultimate supercomputer, and your self-talk is the program that will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names, you won't remember that name of the next person you meet because you programmed your supercomputer not to. Now, somebody can have a limitless mindset and even have great methods, But you need the second part, which is— and the final one, which is motivation, right? Somebody could have the everything is possible and know what to do to invest, to fundraise for medicine. And this also, limitless model, is a framework, a lens you could see the world through. Because if people aren't following through with your methods or your medicine or they're not buying, right, then they might be lacking the motivation. Now, simply motivation for me is a simple formula. P times E times S3. P times E times S3. And I put a link in my Twitter and my Instagram for all of you, because 95% of what we put out there is free. We donate 100% of the proceeds to Limitless to charity, to Alzheimer's research for women, because women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men, in memory of my grandmother, and also to build schools from Ghana to Guatemala. But so the training there, everyone knows the methods. What's missing often, the P stands for purpose. You need a reason, because without a reason, you won't get the result. Many of you can remember names, but you don't have a reason to, right? And you don't remember all the names, but you certainly don't forget names. A lot of the names you remember, you tend to have a reason. You're attracted to the person. That person would be good for a business or so on. So, reasons reap results. The E stands for energy, which are all the things that are to optimize your brain health. We talk about the 10 best brain foods in the area of neuro nutrition, how to optimize your sleep, how to reduce your stress, the things that deplete energy out of the system. Because somebody could have— let's say we're doing this thought experiment. You want to be able to work out, but you can't work out. You need purpose. You need reasons. And the reasons have to be here, not here. Because a lot of people intellectually know. The success formula is things have to go from your head to your heart to your hands. You could visualize and set goals and KPIs here, but if you're not acting with your hands, check in with the second H, which is your heart, right? With the emotions. Because we are not logical. We are biological. Think about dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. We have this chemical feeling soup. So, optimize your energy because you might not work out because you just ate a big processed meal. And then finally, S3, small, simple steps. A lot of times people could have purpose to do something, to buy or to invest or to follow a certain medical protocol. They could even have energy or resources. And a country has energy or resources also as well. But small, simple steps is sometimes that thing is too intimidating, right? Or it's confusing. And a confused person doesn't do anything. So instead of working out maybe an hour a day, it's putting on your shoes, right? Maybe instead of— you want to read, you know, leaders are readers, you read to succeed. 10 pages a day is too much. Turn— opening up the book is a small, simple step. Even with your children, putting one sock in the hamper, right? Little by little, a little becomes a lot. I'll end with this. These crossover points, mindset and motivation, I'm gonna give you 3 I's. That is inspiration. And we heard a lot from Sekou about inspiration. You have the mindset, believe it's possible, and you have some purpose, right? Some motivation. That's inspiration, but you lack the methods. So you're inspired, but you don't have the instructions. Where mindset and methods cross over, you have the second I, which is ideation. And a lot of people spend their time here. They have a great mindset of what's possible, and they have exponential thinking, and they have great methods, but they're not motivated, right? So, this just stays an idea. And then finally, the third I is this thing called implementation. And implementation is where you have motivation, you're motivated, you have purpose and energy, resources, and you know the methods, but you could still be limited in that box because you're only going to be able to achieve to the degree what you believe is possible, what you believe you're capable of, what you believe you deserve. And so, my message for you today is just, it's a Explore. I challenge you to look at this, this lens, because most people now are shrinking out of fear, where it's— you're downgrading their dreams to meet their current situation. And I would suggest the opposite. You want to upgrade your mindset, upgrade your motivation, upgrade the methods you're using to be able to meet those dreams. There's a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher, and he says, life is the sea between B and D. And I think that's life itself. Life is the C between B and D. B is birth, D is death, C, life, choice. That we— life is full of choices. We are the sum total of all the choices we've made up to this point. And I believe that these difficult times can define us, these difficult times can diminish us, or these difficult times can develop us. We decide. Thank you very much. Thank you.