In this episode, Jim Kwik explores the three levers of change and how to shift your mindset, motivation, and methods for success. Jim shares his journey overcoming a childhood brain injury and how he discovered practical methods to drive change. He also introduces his “brain animal” framework for understanding how we learn and discusses the importance of self-awareness, living by core values, and making intentional choices. Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own growth, embrace self-compassion, and take practical steps toward a more limitless life.
Exciting News!!! Coming in March, 2026, my new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is now available for pre-orders!
Key Takeaways:
- Personal growth and self-improvement
- Overcoming adversity and challenges
- The importance of mindset and motivation
- The concept of “feeding the good wolf” within oneself
- The role of choices in shaping one’s life and identity
- Strategies for navigating grief and personal loss
- The significance of core values in decision-making and behavior
- Understanding different cognitive brain types and their impact on learning and communication
- The power of self-awareness and introspection
- Practical methods for enhancing brain function and overall well-being
Jim Kwik is an internationally acclaimed authority in the realm of brain optimization, memory improvement and accelerated learning. With over 30 years of experience, Jim has dedicated his life to helping people tap into their brain’s full potential. From overcoming learning challenges after a childhood brain injury, Jim embarked on a journey with the mission to leave no brain behind. Through his teachings, Jim inspires others to unlock their inner genius, empowering them to live a life of greater power, productivity, and purpose. Jim’s newest book is an expanded edition of his New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, “Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life“
Connect with Jim Kwik: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
If you enjoyed this conversation with Jim Kwik, check out these other episodes:
How to Harness Brain Energy for Mental Health with Dr. Chris Palmer
How to Eat for Better Mental Health with Dr. Drew Ramsey
Eating for Brain Health Dr. Lisa Mosconi
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Episode Transcript:
Eric Zimmer 00:01:04 You know that moment when we swear everything will change and then nothing does? I sure do. Jim Kwik, who’s a brain coach, learning expert and author of limitless, has spent his life studying why that happens. We talk about why insight means nothing until it finds its way into behavior, and he breaks it down into three levers. We can all work with what we think, what we feel, and what we do, or the head, the heart and the hands. And I love that. Because change isn’t a lightning strike. It’s a practice. A thousand small choices that introduce us day by day to who we’re becoming. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Jim. Welcome to the show.
Jim Kwik 00:01:49 It’s good to be here, Eric. Thanks for having me.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:50 I’m excited to have you on. We’re going to be discussing your book, limitless. Upgrade your brain, learn anything faster, and unlock your exceptional life. And it will actually be the expanded edition because you’ve added to it recently, and we’ll be talking about that. But before we do, let’s start like we always do with the parable.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:07 In the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Jim Kwik 00:02:41 I like that a lot. I just got goosebumps. I haven’t heard the parable for a little while, but the way you expressed it, I call them truth bumps. So thank you. Thank you for that.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:49 Yeah, yeah, that’s a great phrase.
Jim Kwik 00:02:50 I like the one you feed because I’m a brain guy helping people improve their brain.
Jim Kwik 00:02:55 And I believe what you nourish. Flourishes. And we always have a choice. There’s a quote in my book, limitless, expanded from a French philosopher that would be relevant to this. He says life is a letter C between the letters B and D, where B stands for birth, D stands for death life, C choice. Now we always have a choice, including what we’re going to do, who we can spend time with, where our focus is, what things mean. And we always have a choice of which one we’re going to feed. And yeah, whatever you nourish is going to flourish for sure, including especially now, because I believe if you perceive these as difficult times and certainly history has had that difficult times, but without even comparison, these difficult times, they could diminish you. These difficult times can distract you or these difficult times they could develop you. And we decide, and we always have agency because we always have a choice. Yeah, I love that parable.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:51 So interestingly, what you just said there was where I was going to start the interview.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:55 It was a recent quote that you posted on Twitter. Difficult times can define you, diminish you, or develop you. I love that idea. Talk to me a little bit about how to use difficult times for our growth. So let’s just pick a difficult time. I mean, the world is challenging. I tend to agree with you. I think the world has always been challenging. I mean, the history is brutal, but let’s look more internally. Let’s talk about somebody who has, let’s say, lost someone really precious to them. You know, maybe someone died or a breakup happened or any sort of great loss in which there is real grief and sadness, and there’s also a recognition in it that there’s a way to grow from it. Talk to me about what’s the right way to orient towards that in a way that’s human right. That doesn’t deny the feelings and things that are happening, but also doesn’t allow us to get stuck in them and allows us to use that energy for positive growth.
Jim Kwik 00:04:53 Sure, I will offer just one perspective.
Jim Kwik 00:04:57 And so I think everybody’s a little bit different. Everyone’s been through. Let’s say the content is different of our past and script and stories. The three areas that I focus on for change, which I assume somebody is looking for some kind of change in terms of a result or how they feel or a behavior. We control what we can control. And I’m not an expert on grief. Yeah. Obviously, obviously everyone has experienced their own share of it, you know, in in different forms. So does maybe some context for listeners who aren’t familiar with my work.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:30 Yeah, please.
Jim Kwik 00:05:31 As a brain coach, I never knew what a brain coach was growing up as a kid. Right. I wanted to be like Batman or Spider-Man. I grew up with learning difficulties. I had a pretty traumatic brain injury when I was five, and we hear a lot about post-traumatic stress. We don’t hear a lot about post-traumatic growth. People who come through difficult times, times that you wouldn’t wish upon anybody. And some people come out of it feeling that they wouldn’t change what they went through.
Jim Kwik 00:06:01 Even though it was the hardest time, was most difficult in their darkest time in their life. And again who am I to say like everybody has their own path and I feel like sometimes some things we can only learn in a storm or in a difficult situation. So because of my accident, I had learning difficulties severe, I couldn’t focus. Remember I had processing issues. Teachers would repeat themselves five, six, ten times and I would pretend to understand, but I understand anything. It took me years and longer to learn how to read than the other kids. When I was nine, I was slowing down a class. I was being teased pretty harshly that day because I was bullied all the time. But that day, the teacher came to my defense and pointed to me and said, leave that kid alone. That’s the boy with the broken brain. that label. Then all the kids started playing broken, right? That was kind of like the thing. So I struggled all through school. Elementary school, middle school, junior high, high school.
Jim Kwik 00:06:58 You know, just it was unfair because I felt like I worked three times harder. My my parents had immigrated to the United States. My dad was 13. He had lost both his parents. And I don’t want to say a sob story, cause everybody has their story, right? They couldn’t afford to feed him. So he came here to live with his aunts, and we live in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at, and everybody has their own thing. And I realized that, you know, growing up, we didn’t have a lot of resources as people would define them. We had no money, no education, no contacts or whatever. But, you know, I realized coaching the people, I’ve had the honor to be able to work with, that. It’s not just about resources, it’s about our internal resourcefulness. And that three things we could always control as you control what you can control, who you control the controllable. If people feel like that, they’re in a box.
Jim Kwik 00:07:49 Because limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless is about progressing like we want to mature, and we want to progress and get wisdom and feel good. And, you know, be, do, have, share, whatever. But if you feel like you’re not progressing, you feel like you’re in a box emotionally, like you feel stuck or financially or happiness or learning whatever. You’re not making progress, right? So that box is defined by the three dimensions that contain it, right? It’s three dimensional. And these are the three same three forces that will liberate you out of those states or those situations, the feelings that you’re feeling. And the three things I feel like are the big levers for people. That’s practical is our mindset, our motivation and the methods. It’s our head, our heart and our hands, right? It’s what we think, what we feel and what we do. And those are the three things we could always control. And so we can’t control our past, right? And it’s interesting because my two biggest challenges growing up were learning because I was the worst in school.
Jim Kwik 00:08:52 And second was public speaking because my superpower and I talk about superpowers because I eventually taught myself how to read by reading comic books. And those stories really kind of brought it to life. The words I was learning in public speaking because I never knew the answer. And so my superpower was like shrinking. I mean, I’m as really good as a kid, taking up a little space, like even my physiology. I was just like, always, like slouching and didn’t want to be seen sitting behind the tall kid in class was being invisible. Right. And life has a sense of humor. Because what do I do for a living? I public speak on this thing called learning every single day for 30 years, but this is just an example of how a challenge led to change. A struggle became a strength, right? And I really do believe post-traumatic growth talks about they wouldn’t wish it upon anyone and yet they wouldn’t. Maybe even change it for themselves, because going through it, they found and discovered something.
Jim Kwik 00:09:49 Some people would call it a gift. Some people would say, I found a strength. I found a trait. I found a mission. I got clarity on a purpose. I found out more about who I am or whatever that is. And so I just feel like adversity in some cases, not all cases, but it’s really what we choose to believe is our truth. Adversity can be an advantage if we’re going to really roar. I don’t know one strong person, Eric, that had an easy life. Yeah, I just I just don’t. Yeah, because it requires muscles and it requires effort. And I don’t know anyone who has given everything that I really find that interesting I want to spend time with. Yeah. Because they never had to go through the things.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:28 That’s a great answer to kind of get into those three areas. And I want to go into those three areas in a second. But what do you feel as you look back? Were there any sort of pivotal moments that launched you in a different direction.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:42 Now, I’m not a believer that like a single moment changes our life, because if it’s not followed by a whole lot of continued behaviors, it doesn’t really mean anything. And epiphany is no good if it doesn’t lead to action. But I’m curious, how did things start to change for you? When did you start to say, oh, wait a minute, I’m not a broken brain person. I can learn, I can, you know, tell me a little bit about some of those experiences.
Jim Kwik 00:11:06 Probably the one that had the most impact on me and really created an inflection in terms of why I’m doing this now. When I was 18, I was lucky enough to get into a local state college. I purposely picked a place that I didn’t know anyone was going there, because I knew that I was affected by how people saw me. And it’s really hard to change when people see you a certain way, if that makes sense. You know they’re used to you and they reinforce that identity. I was perceived as not so smart and broken, and I want to get away from people who thought I was like that so I could try to recreate myself.
Jim Kwik 00:11:42 And I thought freshman meant I could make a fresh start. So I took all these classes and I was like, okay, I’m gonna finally do this, and I want to make my parents proud. I want to show the world, show myself that I could be successful, be smart, you name it, right? Be better. And I took all these classes and I did worse because, you know, it’s just so much more difficult. And I was ready to quit because I didn’t have the money even to go to college. And I have a younger brother. Younger sister, I’d rather have them have the money. And yet I’m also torn because I want to be in a good example and my parents work really hard. Many jobs and I just want to make their sacrifice just mean something. So I had all that angst, right? And I layer that over, like my belief about myself and how I think I’m broken. And I really wasn’t doing very well at all, even though I was working three times harder and putting in the effort and the discipline, it was not because I was lazy, but I just didn’t sell into as well as people that worked a fraction of the effort.
Jim Kwik 00:12:42 So anyway, a friend says, hey, before you quit school, that’s a big deal. And you tell your parents, why don’t you come home with me this weekend? I’m going to see my family, get some perspective. So I think one of the things that helped me was, when you change the place you’re in or the people you’re with, it gives you another point of view. Right? And so I agreed to do that. And the family is pretty well off. I have a nice home on the water and different than I grew up. But the father’s walking me around his property before dinner and he asked me a very simple question, but innocent question. But the worst question you could ask me at the time, he says, Jim, so how’s school? And I am again introverted, very shy, insecure. And I have all this pressure and I start bawling in front of a complete stranger, like crying because I can’t even contain it. Like, this is the first person I just feel like I had so much angst and I just tell my whole story about my traumatic brain injury, and school is not for me.
Jim Kwik 00:13:42 I’m not smart. I don’t know how to tell my parents I’m going to quit school, and I have all this pressure. And he’s like, Jim, well, he asked me a question. He’s like, well, why are you in school? And honestly, I didn’t have an answer, Eric, because nobody’s ever asked me that question before. Like, I just, you know, you go to school, that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? You could go to school, get a job, whatever. Right? And I was like, I don’t know. And, well, he’s like, well, Jim, what do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you want to contribute to the world? And I didn’t have answers for any of that either, because no one has ever asked me those questions. And I realized, besides perspective, going to a new place, people that asking a new question will give you a new answer in life, a new focus or a focal point.
Jim Kwik 00:14:18 And it’ll draw your spotlight of attention somewhere that maybe wasn’t at before. And I was like, I don’t know what I want to be and do have. He makes me write down a list, like a dream list or a bucket list. Things I wanted to accomplish before I kicked the bucket. Right. And when I’m done with this exercise, a few sheets of paper. I start folding it to put it in my pocket, and he rips it out of my hands and he starts to read my dream list. Right. And again, I’m very insecure, kid. And there’s this person who’s obviously pretty successful. And of course, I have the normal reactions, like, I don’t want to be judged and what is he thinking? And all that stuff. And he looks up and he says, Jim, you are this close to everything on this list. And if you’re not watching this on video, I’m just burning my index fingers like a foot apart. I’m like, are you insane? Give me ten lifetimes.
Jim Kwik 00:15:03 I’m not going to crack that list. And he takes his fingers and he puts them to the side of my head. Meaning what’s in between is the key. And he takes me into his room of his home I’ve never seen before. It is wall to wall ceiling, the floor covered in books like it’s a library in somebody’s house. And remember, I’ve never read a book, right? And so now it’s like being in a room full of snakes. So I have a lot of anxiety. I’m very intimidated. But what makes it worse is he starts going to shelves and grabbing snakes and handing them to me. And I look at these books and there are these biographies of some incredible men and women in history, some very early personal growth mind books like Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking, Thinking Grow Rich and Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, all these books. Right? And he’s like, Jim, he’s like, you have to read to succeed. And I want you to read one book a week, and I can’t commit because that’s my word.
Jim Kwik 00:15:55 You know, my parents raised me a certain way. I’m like, I can’t do that. I’m all his schoolwork. And when I said schoolwork, I was because I was like, haven’t you heard anything I’m saying? Like, I have a broken brain. I’m a very slow reader, I said, schoolwork. He pulled out this Mark Twain quote, and he said something like, don’t let school get in the way of your education, right? I was like, that’s very insightful, and I’m still not going to read all these books. And then, very smart man, he pulls out my dream list, my bucket list that he still has, and he starts reading every single one of my dreams out loud. And I don’t know, Eric. It’s just hearing your dreams in another man’s voice out in the ether. You know? Just mess with my mind and my spirit something fierce. And honestly, a lot of things on that list were things I wanted to do for my family. Things they can never afford.
Jim Kwik 00:16:39 Or even if they had money, they wouldn’t do it for themselves. And so with that leverage and that’s another key. So you have perspective, you have different questions. And also what drives you. Like these are things that gave me purpose. So I agree to read one book a week right. I tell people if you don’t have any reasons, you won’t get results, right. That pretty much sums up motivation. If you don’t have a reason, room or someone’s name, you’re not going to remember that person’s name if you don’t have a reason, a real reason that you’re feeling that you remember what you read, you’re not going to remember it, right. And so with those reasons, I go back to school and I’m sitting at my desk and I have a pile of books I have to read for midterms or whatever, and a pile of books I promise to read. And I already couldn’t get through pile. So what do I do? I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I don’t work out, I don’t socialize, I just live in the library for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Jim Kwik 00:17:24 And one night in the library I pass out at 2 a.m., fell down a flight of stairs. I hit my head again and I woke up in the hospital. Like two days later. And at this point I’m down to £117. I mean, like, I lost like 40 whatever pounds, malnourished, hooked up to all these IVs, and it was the darkest time in my life. I thought I died and part of me maybe wished I did because I just felt like I was nothing. And you know, I couldn’t do anything. It was just a waste. And when I was having those thoughts, a nurse came in and kind of interrupted me with a mug, and I drink tea and had a picture of Albert Einstein was a pretty smart person, and a quote that said the same level of thinking that has created your problem. It won’t solve your problem. And it made me think, you know, a new question. I was like, well, what’s my problem? My problem is I have a broken brain and a very slow learner.
Jim Kwik 00:18:20 It takes me eight times longer to learn something than everybody else. Well then, Einstein, how do I think differently about it? Well, maybe I could. I don’t know. Learn to fix my brain. Learn how to learn better. I was like, okay, where do I do that? School. You know, so that’s the only place I know where to learn, right? So I asked for the nurse for the course bulletin for next semester. And I started looking at all these classes, you know, hundreds of classes. Turn the pages and all classes on what to learn math, history, science, Spanish, but zero classes on how to learn those things. And then I got really frustrated and I said, I want to put my studies aside because it’s literally not making any difference in my grades, studying or not. And so I started studying these books, you know, that really tapped into more of what our potential is, right? And then I started getting very curious when I started seeing what the mind could really do.
Jim Kwik 00:19:08 And I started studying like things like speed reading, ancient mnemonics. I wanted to know what cultures do before there were printing presses, how they remember things. Right. And I learned all these techniques, and I was consuming it because I was like, obsessed with it for like two months and a light switch flipped on and I started to really understand things for the first time. And I can’t explain it to somebody. It’s like trying to explain to somebody what a flower smells like that’s never really smelled the flower before or tastes something. That’s it just it was just different. And my grades obviously improved my confidence. My life got better. Now, the reason I’m here today with you in my 50s is because all the suffering I went through, I could detect suffering. It’s hard because all I did as a kid was just watch people, and I would know what it felt like to be bullied or struggled or whatever, and I could see it in other people. And so I wanted to help other people that were having trouble with their learning.
Jim Kwik 00:20:05 And I started to tutor. And one of my very first students, she was a college freshman. She read 30 books in 30 days, and I wanted to find out not how. I taught her how to speed read. I want to find out her purpose, going back to motivation, her reasons. And I found out her mother was dying of terminal cancer. Doctors gave her mom just two months, like 60 days to live. And the books she was reading were books to save her mom’s life. And six months later, I get a call from this young lady and she’s crying profusely. And when she stops, I found out the tears of joy that her mother not only survived, but is getting really better. Doctors know how or why they called it a miracle, but her mother attribute 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from these books. So, long story short, I realized in that moment that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. And it’s a superpower we all have.
Jim Kwik 00:20:52 It’s just we aren’t taught how to be able to do these things, you know? And so I use this, you know, for our podcast, our books, we have the largest online platform for accelerated learning. And we have students in every country in the world. And we have a lot of data. And I could tell people, regardless of your age, your background, your career or education level, financial situation, gender, history, IQ, everyone could improve that. There’s no such thing as a good or bad brain. There’s a train brain and an untrained brain. And with a little bit of effort, you know, and a little bit of mentoring, Everybody could just have an easier life because there’s enough stress and struggle in the world. And yeah, I just wanted to tell people that we’ve discovered more about the human brain in the past 20 years than the previous 2000 years. And we found as we’re growing under estimator on capabilities, and all of this is possible.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:04 Hey, friend, before we dive back in, I want you to take a second and think about what you’ve been listening to.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:10 What’s one thing that really landed, and what’s one tiny action you could take today to live it out? Those little moments of reflection. That’s exactly why I started good wolf reminders, short, free text messages that land in your phone once or twice a week. Nearly 5000 people already get them and say the quick bursts of insight help them shift out of autopilot and stay intentional in their lives. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head to one. You feed, SMS and sign up. It’s free. No spam, and easy to opt out of any time. Again, that’s one you feed. Net. Tiny nudges, real change. All right, back to the show. Thank you for sharing all that, especially those difficult moments. And what a gift that man gave you. You know what a gift that man gave you to see you and and take the time and believe in you. Thanks for sharing all that. I want to move to the title of the book for a second. I’m not trying to make an argument here, actually, but when I hear the word limitless, my brain goes, that’s not we’re not limitless.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:18 Like, I can’t play in the NBA. Like that’s not going to happen. So it’s not like I can do anything. And I don’t think that’s what you mean by limitless, right? Tell me a little bit about what you do mean by limitless. To open that up a little bit.
Jim Kwik 00:23:31 So limitless is again, it’s not about being perfect. It’s about advancing and progressing beyond what you are currently demonstrating or maybe even believe is possible. Yeah. And so I believe that we’re all in this path to reveal and realize more of our potential. That’s my personal belief, because if everyone wanted just everything to stay the same. My question would be if we were to fast forward five years and everything in your life was exactly the same, would you be happy? And I think most people would say no, right? So change is inevitable, but growth is not right. And so I would say that limitless is about redrawing the borders and boundaries, the limits of what’s possible for us to be do have feel in our lives.
Jim Kwik 00:24:21 And so I feel like a lot of this lies in the power of our brain. I’m always wearing a brain on my shirt or pointing to my brain and pictures because I feel like what you see we take care of. You may see your hair, your skin, your car, your clothes. It’s in our constant awareness. So of course we’re more likely to take better care of it as opposed to our brain, which we never see. We never see a thing that takes care of us. And so I always just kind of put it on my clothes or wear on my sleeves point to it, because that’s when to remind people. It’s an incredible gift that we have that we’re born with right between our ears, this £3 matter and every creature in nature, even if you model nature, has some kind of superpower. Some could breathe underwater, some are super fast or super strong or and we’re not any of those things. But because of the power of our mind, we can fly. Because of our power of mind, we can go underwater, right? Or we can be super fast.
Jim Kwik 00:25:15 It’s it’s a form of technology. A lot of people went out to buy the new iPhone this year. They went out and they upgrade their apps or their whatever, their other technologies. But when’s the last time we took time to upgrade the technology that has created all other technology? And so I’m a big advocate for greater mental health. A big part of that is greater brain health. And when you have less stress and you’re sleeping better and you’re eating foods that don’t make you more anxious and stressed and could actually be protective to your brain. And when you’re moving, you just feel better. There’s all all these things that are common sense but not common practice. I feel like, again, going back to the choices that life is to see between B and D and choice is how important it is. You know the choices we make every single day. You know, what are we going to start believing? What are we going to think that day? What are we going to feed our minds? Feed our bodies? Who are we going to spend time with? All of this makes a difference.
Jim Kwik 00:26:08 Everyone wants to know, like, what’s the magic pill? I haven’t found that. I don’t think there’s a magic pill, but I think there’s a process that we all have to go through.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:15 Yeah, I like that. And, you know, to sort of reframe limitless for me in a way that was helpful instead of pulling out scenarios that are unlikely to happen in my case. Right. Like playing in the NBA, what I can totally get on board with, and I would say underlies a lot of my overall life philosophy is that there’s always a positive step, a positive direction. We’re never done. You know, so we may not know our limits. Right? But when we set them obviously incorrectly, they do become our limits. And there’s always a way in which we are able to keep moving, keep growing. And in that way we are limitless, right? Like if we don’t apply it to outside standards. Right? If we’re not applying, am I able to do x, Y, or z? But am I able to, according to my own potential, keep moving forward in a positive direction that is being limitless, right?
Jim Kwik 00:27:09 And you mention and not comparing yourself to external things in your environment or people, or what you see on social media, because there’s a form of digital depression that comes from just seeing the highlight reel of everybody else, you know, as opposed to and comparing, you know, our chapter three against somebody, chapter 20, in terms of some area of development.
Jim Kwik 00:27:30 And I just feel like if we make a comparison, maybe we compare ourselves to who we were yesterday. I mean, if we’re if you’re going to make any kind of comparison rather than to another person, the truth is the grass is greener where we water it, and online it’s greener because there’s a lot of filters people are using or artificial turfs, you know, that they have. Yeah, I think kindness is important because we never know the battles that other people are having, because we only get to see a lot of the kind of the highlights and the good stuff. So, you know, I appreciate the real and the raw conversations that you have in your show, because I feel like people don’t feel like they’re alone, you know?
Eric Zimmer 00:28:07 Yeah. And that kindness obviously needs directed back to ourselves because we know our own battles, but we often don’t really give ourselves credit for how difficult they might be. I guess would be the way to say it, you know?
Jim Kwik 00:28:20 Yeah, I think part of self-care, you know, besides everything we put in the book, we talk about the best brain foods, how to have a better night’s sleep, how to be able to learn fast, all this stuff.
Jim Kwik 00:28:30 So we know self-care is not selfish, right? And part of self-care is looking in the mirror and just just like loving the person that’s looking back at you who’s been through so much but is still standing. Right. Like if you’re watching and listening to this right now, like if I was asked everyone, do you remember that time where you couldn’t survive? You know, I think maybe some of your, your community could relate to that. A time when they didn’t think they could survive. Well, if they’re listening to this and they certainly did, you know. And my perspective is they will again. Right. But self-love is so important, you know, in this process. You know, I think sometimes we have to kind of love ourselves, like we would love somebody else by giving them attention and being kind to them. You know, sometimes we feel like we beat ourselves up because at some secondary level we’re going to fall more likely, like follow through the next day. But studies on compassion, self-compassion show that when we’re kind to ourself, we’re more likely to follow through, you know, on the things that are important to us.
Jim Kwik 00:29:34 Yeah. So, I mean, life is messy. So let’s just get that clear, right? It’s not it isn’t success. Happiness is probably not a straight line. I don’t know. Many people have had that that kind of experience, certainly I didn’t. There are a lot of hills and peaks and valleys, with or without a doubt, and we do the best we can with what we can. And I think the most important thing is to keep the most important thing. The most important thing. Yeah. Meaning that it’s not so much about time management as it is mine management. And for me the most important thing is, like you, everyone has a to do list, right? To get through the day. A lot of people do. But I think it’s important to have things like to feel list like when you’re facing a difficulty or demand, or maybe you’re having a spirited debate with a family member. You don’t ask yourself, what do I need to do? Most people ask what people do, but maybe we say, like, who do I need to be at this moment?
Eric Zimmer 00:30:27 My favorite question?
Jim Kwik 00:30:28 Yeah.
Jim Kwik 00:30:28 New question. You get a new answer and if you choose like, hey, I want to be compassionate, then the doing takes care of itself, right? Yeah, it’s it’s organic. It’s very natural. But having a to be list I think it’s important. And it sounds like kind of like maybe hokey for some people, but they say the two most powerful words in the English language are the smallest. I am, because whatever you put after that is, you know, determines your identity and your life direction. So I feel like I thought my aim was I am broken. And over time I started changing those questions where I was like, okay. It was like, I’m unbroken. So how do I not be seen? There’s this Japanese art form called kintsugi, where an emperor in Japan had this treasure like teapot and one day broke it and sent it back to China to have it fixed. And when it came back, it was just all they did was like, put these, these staples to hold the pieces back together.
Jim Kwik 00:31:29 And it was very unsightly. So he goes to his craftsman locally and says, you got to fix this. And when craftsman really does something different, takes out the staples and actually uses this like gold, kind of a embalming kind of fluid. So like really highlighted those places where it was broken and made it beautiful. And the idea behind this philosophy is in life, sometimes we feel like we want to hide and we have shame around the things where we have wounds or cuts or we were suffocated. And it really depends on the meaning we put to it, right? Some people look at it like, I have this and I’m have some kind of shame or deformity around this, and I’m talking about like a metaphor. Like can be emotional. It could be whatever they went through. And other people say like, hey, that this is, you know, my scars I wear proud because I was stronger than what I was facing, you know, and I survived. And I think whoever’s going through difficult times right now, I feel like that we inspire people with our grit and our grace that even if they won’t acknowledge it, that people see that, you know.
Jim Kwik 00:32:36 So I definitely wish people the best on that path. And I think that the goal here is we show up, that there’s a version of ourselves that I feel like deep down we know is patiently waiting. And the goal is we show up for ourselves every single day until we’re introduced. And part of that showing up for ourselves is just realizing that we’re human, that we make mistakes. You know, I think self-love and self-care is not selfish, But, you know, part of self-care is forgiving ourselves, you know, for things that we did the best we could at that moment of time. And we can’t change the past. We can make a mistake. And we we all make mistakes, right? But mistakes don’t have to make us right. I feel like if we learn from it, that we could grow from these things, that they become stepping stones to the person that we know we are.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:53 You introduced one of my all time favorite questions, which is essentially, who do I want to be in this A situation.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:00 You know, whatever situation I find myself in. Who do I want to be? A long time ago. My son’s 25 now. He was two and a half. Three at the time. His mom left me for another man very suddenly. And I was really hurt and angry. And, you know, it was a very difficult time. But that question who do I want to be through? This was really a beacon to me of here’s who I want to be. I want to be someone who isn’t bitter, who isn’t hateful, who is forgiving. And I’m not saying I did all that perfectly. I didn’t, of course, but it gave me a direction. And I can look back on that time now, and I can look back on that time with my ex. And we would both say, yeah, Bravo. Right. Like, you really handled that in a way that I can feel very proud of all these years later. And so I just think that question, who do I want to be can be used on really big situations.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:58 It can be used on who we are as a person, but it can be used on really little situations like you talked about too. It’s a discussion with a family member. Who do I want to be? I’m sitting down to dinner with my family. Who’s the person I want to be? Do I want to be connected and paying attention, or do I want to be distracted by work? Yeah. So I love that. I’d like to pivot to something you said, which is I am. And then whatever you put after that is really important. And we’ve talked about limiting beliefs a very little bit here. We talked about if I put after I am broken, then I’m going to be consider myself broken. And you also talk about identity, right. Our identity is very important in our ability to change who we are. Right. I think probably James Clear put it in his book. Maybe. I don’t remember the first time I heard it, but it was the idea of it’s very different to say if you’re trying to quit smoking and somebody offers you a cigarette to say, I’m not a smoker versus I’m trying not to smoke right now.
Eric Zimmer 00:35:55 Right. There’s an identity change there. But the thing that I always find really tricky about this is that we don’t tend to be able to lie to ourselves. So, for example, if I want to be a physically fit person, someone who takes very good care of myself, right, I could say I am physically fit. I am whatever word you want to use there. But if my behaviors aren’t there, how do I hold that identity enough that my behaviors will eventually catch up and be able to use that identity? Because identity, I think, can be used in in negative and positive ways, but I’m often not sure how to handle the gap between the identity I want to have and the actual behaviors that are happening.
Jim Kwik 00:36:40 All right. So let’s unpack that. So if people want to change, imagine a building that’s made up of different floors. So most people let’s go to the second floor one. It creates some kind of behavioral change. They want to stop smoking. They want to start eating these brain foods.
Jim Kwik 00:36:58 They want to read every day or they want to meditate, whatever the behavior is, right? They want to change that, and they try to put energy and effort towards that behavioral change and not usually that successful, right. And if it doesn’t stick, there’s their reasons because there are other flaws in that building. If you go one floor up on the third floor, I want you to imagine that if the second floor is behavior, the third floor is capability. So let’s say somebody wants to read more. Right. I always talk about leaders or readers because of my mentor. People have seen photos with me, with Ellen or Oprah, whoever they people ask how we bonded. We bonded over books, right? Because they read to succeed. And here’s the thing. If you’re not reading the behavior like 30 minutes a day for because reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body, maybe you don’t have the capability. The third floor capability is how you read write. And so maybe you’re reading like you were last taught, which for most of us was when we were six years old.
Jim Kwik 00:37:58 And that’s the last time we took a class called reading. And the difficulty in demand has increased. Aleppo, how we read it is the same. So we have a lot of stress around that, right? So maybe we have to address the capability or somebody wants to play a musical instrument, but learning how to play the musical instrument right above capability, though, is another flaw, which people can imagine is the fourth floor. And that would be the beliefs and the values. Right? So somebody could want a behavior of remembering names, right? What we teach, they can even learn how because they went through one of our programs or read the book, but maybe they don’t value remembering people’s names. And that’s going to affect the change, right? Or lack thereof, because they don’t value it beliefs and values, or they don’t believe it’s even possible for them to remember names because it’s a belief issue. So belief in values in the fourth floor and on the fifth floor Law, you have identity because the identity again is your IAM because somebody.
Jim Kwik 00:38:57 You’re right, that behavior won’t shift. Let’s say they want to do this, you know, make ten sales calls a day. That’s the behavior right. And their identity is I am a procrastinator. And so that’s me really hard to maintain that change. Just like if somebody is smoking the example you use, that’s a behavior on the second floor. But their identity on the top floor is I am a smoker. That’s not going to change. Right. And then the first floor is also important because that’s your environment. And the environment plays a big role in our habits and who we are. Right. And so like maybe somebody wants to change the behavior of whatever eating night at the nighttime, but their environment is they have a lot of snacks by their bedside. Right. That’s going to be really hard to reconcile. So I just want to show people that there are very logical levels that we need to be able to address to be able to affect change. And notice, like we talked about the power of questions in this conversation, that questions are the answer, that if you ask a new question, you’re going to automatically get a new answer.
Jim Kwik 00:40:03 And there’s six questions that were taught in school, right? Five W’s and an H. So six questions. So the identity is answering the question of who the top level right when you go down one level. Beliefs and values are your why. It’s answering the question of why you go down a level, the capabilities. That’s the how you go down to the level of the second floor behavior. And that’s the what. And then if you go to the environment, the environment is the when and the where. So it’s just in order to create consistent change or let’s say let’s call it a transformation, we have to address all those different floors flaws because then you’re in integrity, right? You’re in some kind of alignment. Everything is integrated and you’re not battling floor to floor. Yeah, because you’re out of alignment, if that makes sense.
Eric Zimmer 00:40:59 Yeah, that is a stunningly good analogy. Actually, I’ve done a lot of studies of behavior change and I know all these different pieces, but putting it in the analogy of a building is really, really helpful.
Eric Zimmer 00:41:11 That’s bravo. I mean, that’s really good. That’s really good. Every once in a while you see a model and you’re like, that really makes a lot of sense. And this one makes a lot of sense. It reminds me a little, and I know you are familiar with this. We’ve had them on a couple times BJ Fogg. The Fogg behavioral model is really helpful, but this is right up there. Nice work. So we don’t have a ton of time. And there’s a bunch of things I would love to get to. But what I’d like to talk about right now is the fourth floor values. Right? Because we often have a lot of values or a lot of things we’re trying to value. So let’s just take your example of learning people’s names. I may value it, but I may not value it as much as I don’t know. My point is we have competing values often, right? We have competing values. I want to meditate in the morning, but I also want to work out in the morning.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:05 And I also want to do x, Y, and Z in the morning. And there’s only so much time in my morning, right? If I’ve got kids and I’ve got to get to work. So we’ve got these competing values, which in my experience it’s very problematic. It causes us to jump around a lot. It causes us to do this. And then a couple days later we’re like, wait, I’m going to value that. And that doesn’t seem to be doing what I want three days later. So I’m going to value this. Talk to me about sorting all that out. Or or a psychologist would call it these competing commitments is another word for it.
Jim Kwik 00:42:36 So a value for me is something that you treasure, right? Yeah. One of the things you could do is first you need to know what you value, and probably a tool you could use to be able to decide on your values or uncover those values, is asking the question and not not necessarily what do I value? But maybe putting it in a different way, like what’s most important to me in whatever context, what’s most important to me in a career? What’s most important to me with family? What’s most important to me in a relationship? Because what’s most important to you in a relationship might be different than what’s most important to your partners with a value in a relationship.
Jim Kwik 00:43:16 Right. And so everyone’s different because we all had different environments, different experiences. And we learn to associate, you know, positive things to different values and more than others. Right. And pain towards other things. And so what I would say is ask yourself this question. And everyone could do this. Now what’s most important to me in life. And you’re going to get a bunch of answers. And when you have those answers, then you put it into some kind of Hierarchy, right? Because you might come up with a lot of answers. So, Eric, what’s most important to you in life? What’s one of the things that you value? What’s most important to you in life?
Eric Zimmer 00:43:52 Being kind.
Jim Kwik 00:43:53 Kindness. Yeah, yeah. What else is really important to you in life besides kindness? Growth, growth. And then maybe one more. What’s one more value you have in terms of what else is besides of kindness and growth? What else is important to you in life?
Eric Zimmer 00:44:11 This is where values always trip me up, because about 15 different things come to mind.
Eric Zimmer 00:44:15 Yeah, right.
Jim Kwik 00:44:16 Pick one. That’s just something of value. I mean, there’s no right or wrong loyalty. Loyalty. And then so if you’re looking at these, then when you’re looking at things like kindness, growth and loyalty, what’s more important in the context of, let’s say, a relationship, kindness or loyalty or growth.
Eric Zimmer 00:44:35 Kindness.
Jim Kwik 00:44:36 Kindness. So people could go through this and have different answers. Yeah. And it gives you an idea. You know, in The Matrix where neo goes to see the Oracle for the first time and like someone saw the matrix that’s in the kitchen, there’s a sign up on top of the kitchen. In the doorway. It says, know thyself. And I think a big part of our happiness or fulfillment is having the curiosity to know ourselves. Right. And then the other part is having the courage to be ourselves, because that’s a different game, right? You get to know yourself because you do assessments, you go to therapy, you journal, you meditate, or you go through.
Jim Kwik 00:45:11 You reflect right introspection. You get to know yourself. And then a different game is being that person having the courage to do that in spite of other people’s opinions and their expectations and everything else. So I think that, like you asked somebody, they could value love, they can buy you freedom, they could love you safety, they could value all these things. And the values are going to determine how they behave in the building. Right. Because if somebody values safety and somebody other people value riveting adventure. They’re going to make very different decisions in their life. They’re going to invest differently. They’re going to travel differently. You know they’re going to spend time with different people. Right. I mean, but then imagine those two people are married. Right. And so you have these value conflicts, and we also have the conflicts within ourselves, certainly. And to our ability to reconcile that. I’m not saying suggesting this is easy, but anything starts with awareness. Yeah. Right. Any kind of change we need to realize, like what the situation is and have some self-awareness to know where we are.
Jim Kwik 00:46:12 Because you need some kind of baseline. Right. You can’t manage something unless you can kind of know what the situation is. For me, I would be thinking about get clear on your values. Like my values are love, growth, contribution, adventure and adventure. Interesting. It’s only something I added the past few years. Me too. Yeah. So I was just like, well, if I’m gonna do this, I want to have fun, too. And so I make my decisions based on family and friends and my relationships based on Will. This helped me to evolve and what do I want to grow? So my third value is to have more to contribute, and I want to have some fun in the process, because having had a couple of near-death experiences, it just makes me think about, you know, the kind of things that would regret and so try to bring more joy to, to what I do, find that joy and look for it, even though it’s hard to find. So I don’t have an easy answer on how you could just be in total integrity all the time.
Jim Kwik 00:47:05 I still know, I wish I maybe you could ask AI how to be able to to be able to do that all the time, but that’s not my superpower. But I do believe that our values shape our behaviors and how it also provides the behaviors, the evidence that we are the person we say we are. And we always have a choice. We can look at the things that we’re doing wrong, and some people are really good at beating themselves up when they don’t follow through or they do a bad behavior they know they shouldn’t do, and then it imposes on their identity, saying, I’m not this person. Or they could also look for evidence and shine a spotlight on the things that they’re doing well, as evidence that they are the person that they want to be. Yep. Right. And a big part of that is asking questions, because primarily, your brain will delete most everything. And the things that it will pay attention to are things that you ask questions about, because then you put a spotlight there.
Jim Kwik 00:47:56 So if your dominant question is, why does this always happen to me? That’s not a very empowering question, because you’re going to come up with answers because you ask them. You’ll receive for all the reasons why this is happening to you, as opposed to saying, where’s the gift in this? What’s the best use of this moment? Who should I decide to be? You know, right? Right now just put a different focus and flair on the things that are already around us. And then our focus becomes our reality, right? And what we are, we focus on. We feel, and however we feel determines what we’re going to think and what we’re going to do, and ultimately the results we’re going to have in our life, or lack thereof.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:32 Yeah. Thank you for that. I recognize I’ve taken you into a whole bunch of questions that aren’t necessarily your brain coaching stuff, right? So I want to put a plug in for, you know, like if you want to learn how to learn and learn how to take care of your brain and all these different things, you’ve got tons of great resources on that.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:49 I’d like to talk about. Though brain type. I think that’s what you call it, right? Yeah. Talk to me about brain type, because you told me before we started. You think this is one of the most important and practical pieces? And I know we don’t have a ton of time, so, yeah.
Jim Kwik 00:49:02 This is very practical and a great way to kind of put an exclamation point on this, on this conversation. And it’s extremely useful. So I help people with their focus, their their memory, their ability to read faster, but also their mindset, all the stuff that we’re talking about, their belief systems, their personal motivation to overcome self-sabotage and procrastination. That’s what I mean. That could keep you limited as opposed to more limitless. I realized, though, that everyone thinks differently and everybody leads differently. They hire differently. They buy differently, they learn differently. So we’ve identified four buckets where our brains got cognitive types. And I’m going to make this really simple. We made an assessment in the book.
Jim Kwik 00:49:43 People could also get it online for free and said my brain animal com my brain animal and we made them fun animals. And it’s kind of like you take a test on this like quiz online. And what Game of Thrones character are you like or something like that. And when you do, you find out how you really learn, lead and live and communicate the best that you do because you understand and you also understand the people around you. So it’s a brain code Cod. It’ll go through really fast. If you’re a C, you’re a cheetah. The cheetah is fast acting. They really implement. Some of you may be cheetahs. You have strong intuition and you apply things and you adapt very quickly in fast paced environments. If you’re an O in the code, you’re an owl and owls love logic. They love data. They love facts and figures and. Interesting. Right? A cheetah and an owl would act differently. They buy differently, right? They communicate differently also. Then they learn differently also.
Jim Kwik 00:50:43 They read differently and remember differently also. The DNA code are your dolphins and your dolphins are your creative visionaries. These are individuals that are creative problem solving pattern recognition. They often get to see a future that other people can’t yet perceive. And finally, the E and code are your elephants, and their defining trait is their empathy. They can feel what other people are feeling because of it. They have strong bonds and they are really good community builders and collaborators also as well. So once you take the quiz at my brain animal comm or the quizzes in the new book, and plus we pull from personality types, left brain, right brain, dominance, learning styles, multiple intelligence. They’re like, we built this. Once you do, you get a report and based on your animal this is how you could perform better. This I could read better. Improve your memory. Remember names. Learn languages. Also communicate better because everybody they communicate different, right? A cheetah is just direct to the point, right? Owls are looking for the facts, right? They ask questions.
Jim Kwik 00:51:45 They do take more time because they do research, right? They’re trying to organize everything. Dolphins, you know, speak in very vivid terms and creative terms because a picture is worth a thousand words. And, you know, obviously elephants have high levels of empathy. So they’re amazing listeners. They’re really good at conflict resolution. That’s an example of how it could play out in communication, but it plays out in hiring, in management and parenting and teaching and so much more. So yeah, people can take the quiz. There’s nothing to buy. It takes about four minutes. And not only you take it, but have your friends and family members take it because it will give them the gift of knowing more of themselves also as well.
Eric Zimmer 00:52:22 Wonderful. Well, Jim, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation and we’ll have links in the show notes to my brain, animal com and other things you’ve done.
Jim Kwik 00:52:33 The book is just limitless book. We’re donating all the proceeds to charity, children’s charity and Alzheimer’s research.
Jim Kwik 00:52:39 And if anyone gets any kind of value when you go there, you also get some free brain training on speed reading and memory as my gift to kind of celebrate the launch of the book. But I want to thank you for having me and thank you everyone took the time to listen to this conversation, maybe screenshot it and post it online and share like just kind of one takeaway, maybe of your values, maybe your dominant question or maybe something that you’re going to put into action. Tag us both. So we get to see it. And I’ll actually repost a couple because you’ll tag us. So I get to see it, and then I’ll gift out a couple of copies of the book to your community. It’s just some random people, just as a thank you for having me on your show.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:14 As we wrap up, take one thing from today and ask yourself, how will I practice this before the end of the day? For another gentle nudge, join good Wolf reminders text list. It’s a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:32 Nearly 5000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at once. No noise, no spam. Just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf. Wonderful. Thanks so much, Jim, and I hope our paths cross again soon.
Jim Kwik 00:53:48 Absolutely. Thanks, Eric.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:49 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.
