Ungifted: Redefining Intelligence in Education & Life

Have you ever felt underestimated? Maybe you were mislabeled or misunderstood. Maybe somebody told you that you weren't smart enough, you weren't creative enough, you weren't gifted enough.

I mean, I think the best way of thinking about potential from a scientific point of view, a real, a real, a real truthful point of view, is that it's just probabilities at any moment in time. And by putting in that work and engagement and passion, you're literally changing the probabilities.

Have you found any surprising strengths that individuals with the trait ADHD, dyslexia, or other brain differences bring to the table?

I proposed in that article that we should reframe ADHD to an overactive imagination disorder.

If you were to redesign your entire school experience, why are you so obsessively focused on skills and ability?

And not looking for the seeds of growth, looking for the seeds of passion, the seeds of lots of different forms of potential that we may never realize.

Well, what if they were wrong? Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I'm your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. My guest today is someone who not only redefined intelligence, he really lived that journey. Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman was placed in special education as a child and labeled with a learning disability, much like I was. So this is a conversation I was really excited to have. But through perseverance, curiosity, and a deep sense of purpose, he went on to earn a PhD from Yale and become one of the most respected cognitive scientists in our time. In his bestselling book, Ungifted, which we're gonna talk about today, Scott makes a very powerful case that intelligence is not a fixed score. It's in fact dynamic, ever-evolving expression of your unique mind. So this conversation will challenge everything that you thought you knew about things like IQ, learning, giftedness, and human potential. So whether you were the kid in the front row, the back of the class or somewhere in between, this episode is for you. You really may discover that being ungifted might just be your greatest gift. So welcome to the show, Scott.

Oh, thanks. So great to be here. I love that intro. That was beautiful the way you worded that.

Thank you. Maybe we could start, I kind of alluded to it in the intro, Your story begins with being labeled having a learning disability and then later testing into a gifted program. I wanted to start the conversation with how did that personal experience shape your mission to redefine intelligence?

Kind of like everything, it completely shaped it. I've always been the kind of kid who If I saw someone on the playground who was in the corner somewhere kind of being left out, I would kind of beeline towards that person and be their friend. And so even as young as I could be, I remember just being very interested in being with the other kids who were in special ed with me and just misfits and people who've been kind of written off. But me personally, I was placed in special education for a learning disability, for an auditory situation where they thought I was really stupid. And I was bullied quite a lot and quite confused because on the one hand, I felt inside like I was smart or had greater potential. But then I also was like, who am I to question the authorities? You know, so it really created this dual this dual identity in me, um, where I had this fire burning inside me, but no one cared to see it. Yeah. And, uh, and, and, and there was a special moment where a teacher took me aside and asked me what I was still doing in special ed. And it really fueled me to take myself out and, and sign up for classes and challenge myself and see what my brain was capable of. I had no idea. I literally had no idea that I was capable of anything.

And I remember, Scott, that when I was 9 years old, I was slowing down in class and I was being teased pretty, pretty badly that day because I didn't understand the lessons. And, you know, the teacher would have to repeat and, you know, the students just gave me a lot of grief. But teacher came to my defense. She pointed to me in front of the whole class and said, leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain. And that label became became my limit. I remember because this is topical to your story. I was in elementary school and I remember one day a teacher came in and said, exciting news, kids. We are creating a very special elite program for gifted and it's called MASP, M-A-S-P, More Able Student Program. And they took everybody except for me and this other kid named Joey. And we weren't, you know, part of that exceptional gifted group. And we created a group ourselves called LASP, Less Able Student Program. But that label really is, it's interesting, you know, because every single time I did badly in school, I would say, oh, because I have the broken brain.

So you felt ungifted as well?

Yeah, incredibly. This was actually all through elementary school. middle school, junior high, and high school. It was always a struggle. And I would work 3 times harder than everybody else, but I would still— my mother became a special education teacher in the New York public school system to help me with my issues. You know, and then, but, you know, it turns out where adversity ended up being an advantage, right? Having the broken brain, we want to build better brains, no brain left behind. And going back to Ungifted, right?

Yeah.

You challenged the traditional idea of IQ as a fixed number. For those who grew up defined by, let's say, test scores, what's a powerful reframe that you'd offer them today?

You know, my redefinition of intelligence was this. I called it the theory of personal intelligence because I argued so much of the kind of intelligence that's measured on IQ tests is very impersonal. It's abstract puzzles, abstract everything, analogies, holding things in working memory. You don't have the school psychologist asking you many questions about your own personal life and your personal dreams. And the first part of my book is about ability and all the different ways we can have multiple abilities that go beyond just what's measured on IQ tests. But the second part of the book is all about motivation and engagement. And so my argument in that book is that our theories of intelligence have ignored what's incredible that we can accomplish when we are dedicated to something and we have a dream. So IQ tests really don't even take into account your dreams at all and your long-term desires and visions.

What was the most, I don't know, shocking or surprising research And when you were writing Ungifted that you discovered, was there anything that made you rethink everything that you knew about this?

I don't know if, if there was anything that made me rethink what I, everything I knew, but I was in awe of, um, of the, uh, children, the autistic children and those who were savants, um, and people with dyslexia. You know, I kind of did the gamut. Of looking at people with all forms of neurodiversity and looking at their hidden strengths. And a lot of these people would surprise others showing that they have these strengths because a lot of these people were really written off. I mean, even to the level of, I talk in the book about this group called the Future Project that I was working with that went into some schools, really poor neighborhoods where they were about to cancel the school itself 'cause the kids were performing so poorly. And this group called The Future Project came in and gave these kids a chance to realize a personal project of theirs and give them mentors, inspiring mentors from the community. And their entire school turned around after that.

Wow.

And so much so that, yeah, they didn't just cancel the school, but they now use these schools as examples of goodness. And intelligence. So yeah, I think there's just so much that can happen. You know, the power of moving in the direction of what's right for you, self-actualizing. Now I use the phrase self-actualization. In fact, I've renamed my theory of personal intelligence, my theory of self-actualizing intelligence, because I think that makes a lot more sense.

Have you found any surprising strengths that individuals with the trait ADHD, dyslexia, or other brain differences maybe bring in, bring to the table. It might be in creative or intellectual domains.

Yeah, we can go through, to go down the line, you know, talking about each of them. ADHD is a fun one because I probably could be diagnosed with such, so I like that one. ADHD, when you force people with ADHD to concentrate, it can be very, very difficult, especially if the information is boring and it requires a lot of working memory capacity. But if you allow a lot of these individuals to get engaged in a project on their own terms, give them their own structure to set up the structure, you find they often get into this flow state, which is this hyperfocus. Mm-hmm. Which is, it's so paradoxical because the very same people that maybe in a certain context would be viewed as having an inability to focus, in a different context, when they're really drawing on their own personal dreams and future vision, actually show a hyperfocus. And I've read an article, I wrote an article for Scientific American about that called The Gifts ADHD where I talk about the neuroscience of this. I know you love neuroscience.

I do.

I know you love neuroscience, so you'll like this. So much of the research on ADHD has focused traditionally on the executive attention brain network, which is about your ability to hold things in working memory and concentrate. But people with ADHD actually have a very, very active, what I call the imagination brain network or the default mode brain network. Um, researchers have ignored that. And so I, I kind of think that I proposed in that article that we should reframe ADHD to an overactive imagination disorder.

Have you seen any unintended consequences of labeling kids as gifted? And how can well-meaning educators and parents, um, do it better?

Wow, you're asking really good questions.

The—

I haven't been asked questions this good in about 12 years. So, so wow. Um, it's good. It's fun. A lot of kids who are labeled gifted feel great pressure to live up to that label, and it creates a lot of unnecessary pressure on them. Um, there, there's kind of a halo effect of giftedness. If they're labeled as this general label gifted, they're kind of expected to just excel at everything, when the reality of the matter is that the, the individuals who are labeled gifted actually show a great jagged profile of abilities, a greater jagged profile of ups and downs than those who are not labeled gifted. So there's a lot of misunderstandings even about those who are labeled gifted and what they need to thrive. Um, I've really been against pull-out programs, especially pull-out programs that have a minimum threshold of IQ, of a general IQ. Like, you have to have a 120 or a 130 in order to be in the pro pull-out program, because it says nothing about their unique profile of abilities. And it also just sticks them all in a room together and says like, okay, just go be gifted. And it doesn't address the, um, unique needs of the individual child.

You have, you've written what, like somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 books or so?

Just had my 11th.

Congrats. And which one is that?

Rise Above.

Okay. We'll put a link in the show notes as we always do, jimkwik.com/notes. I've had the opportunity to read 3 of your books. There's a quote that I jotted down. It was something Uh, I'm paraphrasing this, but it was potential is not a fixed point. It's a moving target.

Yes.

And I'm curious how one of our, you know, our listeners, if they feel stuck or they feel behind, how can they reconnect with their sense of personal potential?

Yeah. Well, first of all, let me say how I redefined it. Potential. A lot of people think of the word of, of the idea of potential as something fixed in time. Um, you know, you have something like, you know, like LeBron James at age 5 had imprinted on his forehead he was going to be in the NBA, you know, and, uh, and that we could somehow tell all this potential. But I think that we underestimate the extent to which, uh, potential grows over time and changes. I mean, I think the best way of thinking about potential from a scientific point of view, a real, a real, a real truthful point of view is that it's just probabilities. At any moment in time. And by putting in that work and engagement and passion, you're, you're literally changing the probabilities. So I don't think people should feel hopeless at any given time. Um, because I do think these probabilities can change over time. Now, of course, I, all the caveats apply. I mean, you're, you are limited. Genetics matter, you know, like some people were gifted certain genetics that give them an advantage in many areas. Um, and there's no denying that, but, um, you— the point about genetic potential is that you never know what your genetic potential is. You never know it. Why not check it out?

Right.

Push yourself to the max to see, because you don't know. I mean, it would have been very easy for me to have called it quits, you know, when I was a kid. You too. You too, Mr. Kwik. Um, you could have called it quicks. Uh, quicks. That's funny. You could have got a little Freudian slip there, but you could have called it quits. And there's also, there was something in me and you that an individual differences variable, some personality trait or something that caused us to want to prove people wrong. And I write in my new book, Rise Above, I have a whole chapter on that called The Underdog Motivation. And that's a big motivation that causes a lot of Minorities and underserved people to succeed.

Yeah, I would like to think we would have been friends back, back in school.

Oh, for sure. For sure. Maybe even today as well.

Going back to school. So if we were to do this, like a thought experiment, if you were to redesign your entire school experience, let's say from kindergarten to college and beyond. And this is a deep conversation, so maybe you could just highlight a couple of things, but what would you keep and what would you radically want to change?

Well, my, my school system was, you know, endemic of a lot of other schools, so I can generalize it beyond just my school. My school had a particular vibe to it because I went to school with Kobe Bryant and middle, in middle school and high school and, and, and And, uh, he got all the oxygen. And so everyone was so focused towards that. I think for all schools, really recognizing the diversity of, um, of talents that, and interests that people can bring to the table, not just talents, you know, people are so focused on potential in 6th grade at age 12. And it's like, chill.

Yeah.

That's what I would say to all these school systems. Why are you so obsessively focused on skills and ability and not looking for the seeds of growth, looking for the seeds of passion, the seeds of lots of different forms of potential that we may never realize? I have a friend, Kristin Stryker, who has a newsletter and she's trying to study the most passionate people on the planet. But she, she finds really quirky people who are like, have devoted their lives to, um, what's one I saw recently I thought was most interesting was like, um, people who do extreme ironing.

Extreme ironing.

Yeah, it's, that's a thing. I mean, that's, they, there's a whole competition, people who do iron like on top of mountains. And, um, I don't know, it's, it, I mean, but that's just one example. I mean, there's so many quirky things you haven't even heard of. Jim, and that I had certainly hadn't heard of. And that's their thing in life, you know? And who are we to say that a path to self-actualization is not valid? That if you're not good at math, you're not good at reading, that you can't be a brilliant entrepreneur, a brilliant, you know, this is what we find with the dyslexic population. We find that such a high proportion of them end up becoming Great CEOs, you know, and, and, and you interviewed, and I interviewed them and I'd be like, well, um, why CEO? And they said, well, all the time that I, I, I didn't spend reading, I spent, um, socially, uh, influencing people. So, you know, every, all of life's a trade-off. Who are we to say what trade-off is better for one person or another? You know what I mean?

Yeah. Everyone's, everyone's individual. You know, and it's interesting how nature and nurture, how it influences us accessing more of that potential. You mentioned Maslow's hierarchy. I'm curious, this is not a question I had prepared, but what do most people get wrong about self-actualization? And is there a faster path to move up that hierarchy today?

I want to say that I actually reimagined Maslow's hierarchy of needs because The way of framing it like higher up is based on something he never put forward. So it turns out Maslow never drew a pyramid.

Hmm.

And a lot of people, I don't think, know that. That there was just a bunch of management textbook people who tried to represent his theory. So I actually reimagined it as a sailboat because I think that represents better his way of thinking about self-actualization as Being in this vast unknown sea and being in dynamic, you're not climbing up over top of people on the way to the top. You're on your own journey alongside other people who are on their own journey. We can rise the tide for everyone. You know, I wanted to kind of change the metaphor a bit. And, and we have to open our sails and sometimes we have to focus on our security and our boat. Um, so the way I think about the self-actualization journey is this constant back and forth between safety and growth, and you never reach the top and then not have to worry about safety. I mean, for one thing, if you reach the top of the mountain, they very rarely say you have to get back down. Right.

Who's—

no, you never hear that. They're like, oh, I reached the top of the mountain. It's like, okay, now equally as hard, if not harder, is getting back down that mountain. Safety to safety. Yeah.

If we could, another thought experiment, because this is how I do in my downtime. I do these kind of, I set up schedule white space just to kind of ponder. If you could give every student and adult learner, right? Because we're all students in the world, just like one, I'm looking at your book, Transcend, which I recommend, like one transcendence tool? No app, no tech. It could be a mental model. It could be a question. What, what comes top of mind for you? This is a special message and invitation for our students. I want to tell you about a revolutionary, unique, powerful, and proven course to be able to upgrade your learning and your life. So not only can you get better grades, but you could do it in a fraction of the time. For only 15 or 20 minutes a day for 30 days, I guarantee you, you will be equipped with the best tools, tactics, resources, and strategies to level up your learning. Go to kwikbrain.com/student, use the code PODCAST15, and you'll get instant enrollment as a thank you for listening to our show.

A lot of people, I think, are afraid of succeeding. It's not they're afraid of failing, but they're afraid, you know, what if, what if I do succeed? What if I do become, reach these goals? And asking yourself, you know, learn to ask yourself powerful coaching questions, not to wait for others to do that. You know, as trite as it sounds, I think the value of self-belief is grossly underrated. And believing in and trusting your own What you know about yourself and your own potential. It would have been very easy for me to keep listening to the experts, and yet I—I was like, no, I think they're wrong. You know, and be having the the self-confidence and the self-trust that you know yourself better than other people know you. You've lived with yourself longer, even if you're like 14 years old and listening to this podcast. That's 14 years you've lived with yourself more than anyone else on this planet has. You know, even at that point, you know a lot about yourself. Um, and you see yourself and you see what you're capable of and you, you, you see even what dream you have. Um, and, uh, and, uh, and so those are some, some passing things I would think of.

I think I saw the term, uh, Beautiful Minds.

It's been the name of my newsletters for the past 20 years. Yeah.

What, what do you believe makes a mind beautiful? In 2025, in a, in a world, in the context of a world dominated by algorithms and artificial intelligence.

I've really, it's funny, I've thought about my, my, uh, the, the idea of beautiful I've thought about differently, uh, when I first started to now, because now I really focus on goodness of character. Um, whereas in the beginning I focused more on, uh, talent and intelligence and abilities. And now I, you know, I initiated this whole research program I called the Light Triad Research Program, which contrasts with the Dark Triad Research Program of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. I talk about, I look at the dark, the light triad personality and trying to think about how we can get more people with light triad personalities into power, even though they don't want it. And that's one of the great paradoxes of power as I see it, the ones who least have the ambition for power often tend to be the ones that we actually want in power.

How does trauma or early life, let's call it adversity, affect our ability to self-actualize? You know, are there— or is there a tool that comes to mind to help in that transformational transcendence healing process?

Sometimes horrible things happen to us, and then they cause what's called post-traumatic growth.

Mm-hmm.

They allow us to see life differently. And of course, it can be very painful. And, um, there's no denying there's a certain process to go through of maybe grieving, uh, an early— a person, or grieving a life you used to have. But if you can get to a state where you try to see maybe there was some, uh, something here that has caused me to be a more compassionate human, to be a more creative person, to allow me to, uh, firm up my mission in life, then growth is possible. You can't change what has happened to you, and sometimes that requires a real radical acceptance. The, the existential psychotherapist Irving Yalom said, sooner or later, you have to give up all hope for a better past. And it's one of my favorite quotes. And believe it or not, I actually find that hopeful. I actually find that quote hopeful. But we don't need to rush people to do that. I believe in— I call it honest love, validating people's real felt experiences of trauma. Uh, or of a challenging experience. Actually, researchers now call events potentially traumatizing experiences as opposed to labeling challenging events as innately traumatizing, because some people are not traumatized by the same things. So researchers have actually changed their thinking about this. George Bonanno, my colleague at Columbia, um, that's why he calls them potentially traumatizing experiences. But regardless of what we've been through We can show empathy towards that in supporting someone, but also doing a yes, and, and saying, and you have deep reservoirs of resiliency within you. I think you got this. I think you can move forward. So I call that approach my honest love approach.

For our online courses and certainly our live events that we do, we do an event called Limitless Live where we, we curate the most amazing faculty on brain performance and health and accelerated learning. We do a lot of games, right, and competitions. And I'm curious, have you done research in the role play has in adult learning, creativity, and how does play, you know, appear in your life, if it does at all?

Wow, so huge. A lot of my earlier research was on play, and one of the crowning moments in my life was being invited into the Lego World Headquarters and giving a talk on the science of play for the executives there. And then they gave me a tour of the Lego Museum. And that was one of the best days of my life. No matter how old you are, being able to keep a playful attitude towards things and to have an, uh, keep your imagination alive and think about multiple perspectives or to even sort of be playful with ideas, um, is, is, uh, is such an important contributor to great science, great art. Um, some, uh, high proportion of Nobel Prize winners Also have some interest in the arts, and that research has shown that to be the case. And some research by my colleague Sandra Russ looking at early childhood fantasy worlds, so kids that have had fantasy worlds or kids that have had imaginary friends, you know, sometimes that's treated as psycho as pathological, but she's found that that these individuals actually end up. having, living rich, meaningful, creative lives. So I think we need to rethink, rethink the pathology of fantasy.

At our Limitless Live gathering, and, uh, people go to limitlesslive.com, uh, we have an interesting group that attends, like the CEO of Sprint or the founder of WordPress. We had Quincy Jones, uh, the famed, um, award-winning music producer come multiple times.

And I've heard of him.

Yes. I pulled him on stage because I can't, you know, I don't want to lose that opportunity. And I just had this kind of fireside chat impromptu. And I was, he, he, it's interesting. He obviously has a love and passion for music and he also could speak roughly 23 languages, which a lot of people don't know. But we were talking about how music and play could affect our our ability to learn faster, right? As we wrap up, I just have a couple of just—

Oh, I don't want to leave you.

I'm having so much fun talking to you. This could be 8 hours long for sure. What's your relationship with praise? Or we could talk about praising children. Is that good or bad? How does this impact their growth and how should Praise be given. We could, it could be children, it could be your team, but we could focus on children because, you know, we're all, we're all children at heart. But how does the impact, how does this impact their growth and should we praise them at all? And if so, how is it, how is it done? What are the mistakes people make in praising children, good or bad?

Carol Dweck often talks about that and she's done research on that. That you really shouldn't praise the child. Praise the, you know, you can praise the act, the specific, authentically, you know, if someone did something great. I mean, the making of a narcissist, that's another topic I study is narcissism. You really make a narcissist when you overpraise them. You overevaluate things that, you know, the slightest thing and it's like, my child should be number one, should get all the medals, you know, for that. Um, don't be so focused on praising someone in a way that, um, you know, puts them in, in kind of the, the hierarchy of, um, they're the best, but in a way of like, oh, you really getting better, you know, you're really learning and growing, and, um, and there's so much more to come, you know. Um, that's a much healthier way to praise an act and not, and not praising a person like, oh, you're great. You know, right. You certainly can, can praise something wonderful that someone has done without praising the person.

And then if you're praising somebody and saying they're a genius, you know, or they're gifted when they come up to an obstacle that they invariably— we all do. You know, as I understand, they are more likely to kind of stay with it and have that resilience as opposed to if you're praising the act and the effort. And that goes into— yeah, nailed it.

Yeah. Praise the effort. Yeah.

So then what, what, what attributes would you say contribute most to a child's future success? You know, is it a deliberate practice? Is it a growth mindset? Is it— how do you even cultivate that early on? Yeah.

I mean, you're wearing the t-shirt. Mindset is everything. In my new book, Rise Above, I put forward a mindset I call the empowerment mindset. And I think that's the most powerful mindset a child can have. It's, it's one where they don't wait for others to empower them. They, they, they work on the skills of self-empowerment. Um, and you see all the greats, that's what they had.

How does that contrast with, with a victim mindset?

It's the exact opposite, I would say. Um, with a victim mindset, you, you, you feel very helpless. You feel very, Well, because it's all the world's fault, there's nothing I can do. I'm stuck in this system. I've learned helplessness. But what humans can learn is they can learn hopefulness. You know, rats learn helplessness, but humans learn hopefulness. And that's, that's what Martin Seligman's research has shown. After 50 years, he found out he was completely wrong. He got it backwards in humans. It's our default state is to want to blame the world. Our default state is to want to feel helpless when we've had some setbacks. But we, all of us, we're capable of learning the skills of empowerment and harnessing a mindset where we're continually talking to ourselves. Self-talk is so important, Jim, as you have no doubt talked about quite a bit. But Self-talk is so important. You know, don't wait for others to talk you up or to praise you, and don't get hung up on that. Don't get hung up on praise of others. That's not that's not the way. But talk to yourself when you have setbacks, and you if you really have a dream in you, and it's very clear dream, and you have setbacks along the way, keep talking to yourself like you know what what have I learned from this? Constantly course correct constantly. Treat all your experiences as curiosity. But when you catch yourself mindfully going down the pathway of, of a victim mindset, try to catch yourself because that, that's really going to inhibit you.

I love it. And then it also restores your agency, right?

Well, that's exactly it.

As we wrap up Ungifted, highly recommend our Kwik readers get their copy. What is the main message you would like ungifted individuals to remember from this conversation?

Well, I would be copy and pasting you if I said mindset is everything, but I do think there's such a great congruence, Jim. I want to leave here on a very collegial note and say there is such a great influence between what you believe and what I believe. I don't know if it's limitless, but who knows? But the question is, who knows? Right. Who knows until you don't really know what you're capable of unless you really put your all into something. And, and if you put your all into something, chances are that even if the thing that you hoped to happen doesn't happen, other great things are going to happen.

Yeah.

You know, there's very little, uh, to be lost by putting your, your heart into something that you really care about. Um, and, and, and really, uh, overcoming the obstacles with an empowerment mindset along that journey.

Yeah, I would love our listeners to spend more time playing and practicing at the edge of their limits. I truly believe there's a version of everyone listening that's patiently waiting, right? And the goal is, I feel like we show up for ourselves every single day until we're introduced to that person.

I love it.

As we wrap, I ask this question of guests. At its core, our show you know, 400+ episodes is about the love of learning. And so I love asking this question outside of what we've talked about. Is there one thing that you're currently learning about or studying that has you, that lights you up, that has you particularly excited?

Yes. Yes. I've really, I've gotten into, I've started to get into sports psychology. Hey, uh, we actually just announced today, um, an event we're doing in the end of July, um, Unlocking Athletic Excellence, uh, 2-day event. And a lot of the stuff I've studied in my, in my career, I, I see how it can really be applied to coaches, athletic coaches of any age. So that might be my next, my next horizon, who knows. But it's something that's really lighting me up right now for sure, is, um, applying, you know, all this mindsets, all the stuff we've talked about today.

Yeah.

But specifically for Um, youth athletic coaches who work with kids because high performance without wellbeing, high performance without self-actualization, what is it? What is that? You know, you're just a machine, you know? So combining all of the things we're talking about today to, to live a rich and meaningful life. Um, and sports is, I think, a great active potential activator of that. Yeah.

Yeah. I can see how that lights you up. I, I find that a lot of people struggle with like burnout. Um, and burnout In my perspective, it's not just because we're doing too much. Sometimes we're burnt out because we're doing too little of the things that make us come alive, right? That really light us up. As you're saying, passion, you know, combined with power. And if you get, you know, profit as a 3rd P, then you really could, you know, create, you know, a remarkable life there. And I mean, not just financial, but just like all the treasures of your life. Scott, how can people go deeper? I'm sure so many people want to go deeper in your work, uh, stay connected with you.

Yeah, I mean, if anyone wants to send me a message, then go to scottbradeykaufman.com. Um, and then I, you know, have the podcast, The Psychology Podcast, which I've been doing 11 years. Wow. Um, yeah, I get, yeah, like you, over 400 episodes. And, um, and, uh, you know, hopefully there's value, something, hopefully at least one of those episodes will offer someone value.

Well, we'll link to your websites in the show notes, you know, as well as your books also as well. Your, are you on social media?

I sure am. Yep. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram. Yeah. SB Kaufman on Twitter and Scott Break Kaufman on Instagram. Yeah.

Well, I want to, I want to thank you so much, Scott, for, for coming on and sharing your time and, and, and your talent with us. I would challenge everyone to actually take a screenshot wherever you're consuming this and tag Scott, tag myself so we get to see it and maybe share one aha, you know, because I feel like when you teach it and you post it, you get to learn it twice, right? And your fans, your followers, your family, your friends get to benefit, you know, from, from that, right? You learn to earn to, to return in this information, take advantage of the explanation effect and so much more. But yeah, thank you for that. I also want to remind everybody that this episode went far beyond 20 minutes that the audio is. So if you go to our YouTube channel and join 1.8 million subscribers, we put the entire episode there also as well. And for me, this is really about what if we took a pause and stopped asking ourselves how smart you are or how smart someone is and started asking, How, how are we smart?

It's great.

I feel like, you know, with, with Dr. Scott, he's reminding us that intelligence isn't fixed like your shoe size, right? It's not a box to fit into. It's really a garden that you can cultivate. And just because your genius doesn't fit some standardized test doesn't mean it isn't real, that it isn't meaningful, and it isn't purposeful and powerful. So if this episode resonated with you, or if you know someone who's ever felt overlooked or underestimated, share this conversation with them. You never know who might really need to hear this. And just quick reminder, your potential is not predetermined. It's not fixed. It's a process of becoming. And so, Dr. Scott, thank you again for being on the show.

Thank you. It was such an honor. And delight.

Everyone, uh, until next time, uh, be limitless.