Master your INNER CRITIC | Jim Kwik

Let's talk about killing ANTs.

Yes, perfect.

Automatic negative thoughts. And that's a term by our mutual friend, Dr. Daniel Amen. So killing ANTs is clinically proven to be good for your brain. And ANTs being—

So say it again, what's an ANT again?

Automatic negative thoughts. And so this is that critic inside that was just like, oh, you know, I have the broken brain. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. And, you know, the reason again, Is if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. I believe, growing, my last name really is Kwik. I didn't change it to do what I do. My father's name was Kwik, my grandfather's name was Kwik. My life was pretty much planned out. I have to be careful when I'm driving because, you know, you don't wanna get pulled over for speeding 'cause you're not gonna talk your way out of a ticket.

Sure, Kwik, you were going 90.

Right. I had to be a runner back in school, so I run, which is a lot of pressure when, you know, your name is Kwik.

Yes.

But I remember I was preparing for a marathon and I was reading a book on the preparation, the training of it, because I'd never done it before. And I was looking at one of the chapters was the psychology. That's what I was very interested in because I'm a runner, so I could, I feel good there, but I didn't, what was the mindset? And it said this in the first paragraph verbatim, because I'm a memory expert. It said, your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is a program it will run. So So if you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. Here's the thing.

Man, that is so powerful.

It is. Your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is the program it will run. So if you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. And what I always tell people is this, if you realized how powerful your thoughts, your words, your self-talk was, you wouldn't— if you— I forget that. If you realized how powerful your brain and your mind was, you wouldn't say or think something you didn't want to be true. And I'll say that again because that, that's—

Yes.

That's worth posting.

Yep.

Tagging us both in it is just, if you realized how powerful your mind was, you wouldn't say or think something you didn't want to be true. And because all thoughts become things. And it's not to say that if you have one bad negative thought, it's gonna ruin your life any more than eating that donut we talked about would, but it's the consistency of it.

Yeah.

Because our thoughts are that powerful. Our imagination is so powerful. They did this study, it's crazy. I was doing a talk in Sardinia. It's one of the Blue Zones, these handful of zones around the globe that have the most centenarians, people living 100 and above. And I was doing a talk on longevity. And I quoted a study done by Ellen Langer, out of Harvard University. In 1979, she was spending time at senior centers, much like I do, and she was like, this is, this is not a really vibrant place to live your last days. And she did an experiment where she took 8 of the gentlemen out and put them into a redecorated monastery. So it wasn't 1979, she decorated it as if it was 1959. And so these gentlemen got out of the van, And they, they, a lot of them had canes and they were, they were kind of struggling to get into there, there. But they were told this, I want you to pretend it's 1959 again. So when they walked into their living quarters, they had television shows, black and white television shows from 1959. The COVID of Time magazine was from 1959 with that current news. They took all the mirrors out of there so they couldn't see themselves. And they were told for just the next week, just pretend.

It's 1959.

It's 1959. And before they put them in there, they They tested their biomarkers. They tested their senses, their sense of sight, their sense of hearing. They test their focus, their memory. They tested their strength, their physical strength. They took a picture of them before they went in. And then at the end of 7 days, they came back and it was this like, it was like that movie Cocoon. They were just like, it's so interesting. When they came back, they tested them. They were physically stronger. They had better eyesight. They had better sense of hearing. And cognitively, they had better focus and a better memory after just 7 days of living in that environment, listening to that music. And that's how powerful your mind is. And they also took a second picture of them when they came out. And a lot of them came out, they weren't using their canes or anything. It's like this, it's amazing. You could look at the study because they've replicated this in London, in the UK, they replicated in South Korea. But they took pictures of them and they showed the focus group before and after photos and they said, which one's the older photo? You know, and they all thought it was the most recent photo because they actually looked younger also as well.

Bingo.

And that's the power of our thoughts. That's the power of our imagination. And what I would say is you control this, right? And it's never going to be perfect, so the goal is not perfect, it's just progress, just like with our diet, it's never perfect. So many people are so stressed out with their diet, it cancels any positive effects it's having because they have so much anxiety around it. Same thing with your thoughts. Your thoughts, keep them as positive as possible, you want to be able to kill those ants. Now, how do you go about doing that is really the question, right? So a couple of tools, and we've all heard these things before, so I'm just going to encourage you to do them.

Common sense to common practice.

Exactly. So here's one of the— so here's the ways. So meditation is a powerful tool. I meditate twice a day for 20 minutes a day. And for me, it's not about becoming all Zen and going to different astral planes, nothing about that. It's about me separating me. It's a training that allows me to know I'm not my thoughts, because people think that meditation is, uh, My meditation coach Emily Fletcher just has a book called Stress Less Achieve Accomplish More. I had her on my show and she was like, meditation—the enemy of meditation is not thought. You know, you can't shut off your thoughts any more than you could shut off your heart beating. That your brain—that's what it's meant to do, just like your heart is meant to beat. So people don't meditate because they have this objection saying, oh no, I can't do it because I have all these thoughts. No, if you have thoughts, you're working. That's—that's what's supposed to happen. The enemy is not thoughts. The enemy is actually effort. And so this, the goal here is for you to surrender and just see these thoughts come in and see them leave because it helps you realize you are not your thoughts. And so there's a gap between stimulus and response where there's an infinite amount of possibility. And so meditation helps you to be able to separate you from those negative thoughts. Another thing that I would recommend is something that I call ABRA. Really simple technique. ABRA, again, 4 letters, A-B-R-A. The A stands for, okay, you have a negative thought or you have some kind of pain or discomfort in your body. The A is you acknowledge it, because a lot of times pain in our body or thoughts get louder and louder and louder because we're resisting it. And so this part of yourself is trying to amplify the pain, or it's like a lot of times when I take cold baths, like I take cold showers or I take ice baths, I hate the cold. I hate the cold, but I do it in the morning because I wanna get myself to do difficult things. I wanna be able to lower inflammation in my body.

Yeah.

And that's cold therapy, right? It's just science. It's you hit your knee on the coffee table, you put ice on it because it reduces inflammation, it reduces swelling. Well, we have swelling, inflammation in our bodies that keep us from feeling joy and keep us from performing. So cold showers or cold baths allow you to do that. But like when I'm in the ice bath, you know, with Wim Hof and everything, it's— I hate it. But then also I feel like I'm in more pain and suffering because I'm trying to suppress it.

Yeah.

But when I acknowledge it, I'm like, okay, then it doesn't have to scream.

Yeah.

You know, to get my attention. And so I feel like a lot of our negative thoughts, acknowledge them, because what you resist persists, right? If you, you know, same thing with sales or anything else, see that people just fight harder. And, um, you know, our unconscious will fight for those things also as well. So, so the A in ABRA stands for acknowledge it, don't fight it. And the B stands for breathe, because the way, you know, your autonomous, your This autonomous nervous system that we have, right? We have this parasympathetic-sympathetic kind of state, and you want to spend as much time in parasympathetic because that's your rest, your digest, your repair, your recovery. Most people are just amped up all the time, which is really hard for them to be able to sleep and be able to perform. And that's why meditation, all these things are helping you to downregulate and de-excite your nervous system. Breathing is a very powerful tool because it's something you do consciously and unconsciously. So it's unconscious, you always do it, but when we add conscious attention to it, it allows us to bridge that gap between the conscious and unconscious, if you will, metaphorically. And so breathing— so what I would do is like, I have a negative thought, oh, I'm not good at remembering names. I wouldn't fight it, I would acknowledge it.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I wouldn't try to not think about it, because if I try not to think about it, I'm gonna think about it even more. And then I would just kind of breathe into that space where I feel like that thought is, or that pain is, right? Because breath is that powerful tool. And then the R is I'll actually Release, and what I mean is when I'll breathe into that area of my body or that thought, and then I'll on exhale, I'll release it. So I'll inhale limitlessness. I'll inhale possibility. I'll limit. I'll inhale, you know, grace or wisdom, and then I'll exhale limitations. I'll exhale those complaints. I'll exhale like anything that's holding me back in the process. So that's where the release comes. If I have some kind of pain in my body, I'll breathe into that area, and then I'll just release it. Out. And then finally, the A in ABRA, the last A stands for align. And align really is coming back to your truth, because a lot of times when we're in pain or we have negative thoughts, we're not integrated and aligned. We're not completely congruent. And I would align back to what usually— whatever the opposite is to what I was thinking or feeling. I would align back to my true nature, back to what you want. Exactly. Back and back to what I want and back to what I am, what I truly am, in terms of who I really am. That's, that's Not buried underneath the opinions and expectations and all this other, this other junk, right?