← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
NEVER LACK MOTIVATION AGAIN - Unlock Your Super Brain & LEARN FASTER In 2023 | Jim Kwik
01:52:09
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Jim Kwik
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Commercial Narrator
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Jim Kwik
It's about our internal resources. And what I'm saying is optimizing our environment, optimizing our behaviors, our capabilities, our beliefs and our values and our identity. So we're not waiting for Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman. It's like, you are Wonder Woman, you are Batman, you are Superman. It's just we, we have to commit ourselves.
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Tom Bilyeu
Someone's on a, on a mission and they, and they're, they know what to do, but it's just hard sometimes to just do it because you're exhausted. I mean, you know how you feel on one night's sleep the next day, you know, lack of sleep the next day in terms of thinking your focus, your ability to tackle your wherewithal. You know, it's hard. And so I'm become very, very sensitive to things. Sensitive to light sensitive sirens or sounds, sensitive to negative people around me because I don't have layers of protection or resilience because of lack of energy. A long story, but just to kind of paint a picture for motivation. There's never been a day that I haven't done what I've done for 28 years. Never a day that I took a pause for this. Even if I'm on vacation somewhere, I'm still doing this because it's who I am. And I feel like there's a formula because a lot of people, we're on motivation. Getting myself to do this every single day for 28 years and call it motivation, call it drive, and it's a little bit semantics, but it's true. Motivation, most people is a loaded word. It's getting really excited in the moment. You go to a seminar, you dance, and you're like, I'm going to make all these changes, these resolutions. The next day, we know nothing. Nothing changes. And so I, I found a formula that Works for me a three part formula for sustainable motivation. Like when people hear Limitless, a lot of people think about the movie, right? Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro. Bradley goes from zero to hero by taking a pill. All of a sudden he has incredible focus. He wrote his book in a few days. He had this eidetic memory, right? And he became. And he had a surge of motivation. But after that pill wore off, 24 hours later, he just went back to baseline. And I feel like there's a three part formula for motivation. And I'm curious if you agree with this. Sustainable motivation for me is three parts. It's P times E times S3. P times E times S3 will get you there. Meaning that if you are procrastinating, putting things off, think about anything, right? And also when we're talking about lies of learning the seven lies, there's also lies around motivation. Like, I think one of the lies, limited ideas that we entertain is that we have to enjoy the action. Like, the only proof and evidence somebody's motivated is they're doing something to get progressed towards that goal, right? If they're not doing it, they're not motivated. So we could, that's, that's obvious physical. You could observe that, right? You know, like objectively. Now, one of the lies that I feel like I learned also from you is that you have to enjoy that thing that you're motivated to do. I know because I follow you on Instagram very closely that you're working out and you get up early and then you do it. But I asked you one time, do you enjoy it? And the response you gave me is like, you hated it. Now, I don't know if you feel about that like that now currently, but this was a couple years ago, but you still do it. So nobody could question motivation because you're still doing that early in the morning when you dislike it. So it's a lie that you have to enjoy that thing. Every morning I take cold showers. I take ice baths every freaking morning without fail. I never, ever miss it. I'll go cold, then I'll go warm and cold and warm. People watch me on Instagram. I'll do five minutes and then a full ice bath. And I hate it. I hate every moment of it. I grew up in the Northeast. I hate it. But I do it because I have a reason. The P in this formula is purpose. Like, I believe that. Like, and it's not just intellectual reason for doing something, it's feeling it in your, in your whole self, right? And I have a Reason to do it because I'm on this mission, right? And this purpose, right? I want to positively impact 1 billion brains, right? No brain left behind. So I'm very, very clear. So my reason is there and it's not just intellectual and it's not just pleasurable. I feel like the pain of I would let down if I don't do this. Like I feel it because I'm that person. Like I still feel like I'm speaking right now on this video to that 18 year old version of myself or that 13 year old version of myself. You know, like that 12 year old that was being bullied that was called, you know like names because they weren't, you know, like it was weird like in school. Also there was only one other Asian and that he was one year ahead of me and he was valedictorian, he was head of the debate team. He, he messed one question on his SATs, he was so upset and he retook it to get a perfect score. And then I'm coming in after that and I'm like the opposite side of the bell curve, right? And you know, and then pressure from family and self expectations, you know, But I'm driven. So I have my reasons. Pleasurable and painful that drive me every single day. And after you do it for so long, you just don't know any other way. But that's the P and the formula. And then what I did was like scientific method. If I was going to build the ultimate human being who's motivated all the time without fail, is reason enough? Like if someone has a deep enough reason, are they always going to be motivated? Is there any exceptions? And I was like, yes, the E is missing. They could be missing energy. Meaning that a lot of people could have beat so tuned into their reason and know why it's important to work out every day or to read every day or you name it, right? But they ate a lot of, you know, crappy food and they're in a food coma that might keep them from working out or they didn't sleep the night before. Not having the proper level of vitality, physical and mental vitality could keep you from, from being motivated. And then I went in back into my, you know, thought experiment. Okay, the person has deep reasons, they feel it for, for wanting to do build this business or have that great relationship or that great body. They have unlimited energy. Are they 100% every single time going to be motivated? And I was like, no, there's an exception here. There's something missing. S3 because. And I'll tell you what S3 is in a moment. But they could have that thing too big in their head, like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build an entertainment company. And then. But they're not motivated because it's too big, right? And, or it's confusing, right? And so a confused mind doesn't do anything, anything. So S3 stands for a small, simple step. You know, I realize that somebody's not motivated. They have the reason, the energy. But if they can't break it down into something actionable because it's this big monolith, a perfect relationship, I want to meet my soulmate and just live happily ever after, right? I want to have the perfect body. I want to build this million dollar company. Then that could be too intimidating or too confusing or unclear and people never take the action. So a small simple step and breaking it down into how do you. What's the, what's the smallest task you could do right now where you can't fail? That's going to give you progress. And it's all about energy management because think about motivation. It's energy management. It's having a purpose and a reason gives you clarity, gives you energy. You know the things I talk about in the whole chapter of the book on how to optimize sleep and optimal brain diet and lowering stress. Because chronic stress saps your energy, right? It shrinks your brain, right? Now with all the fear going on, this, this pand pandemic, it's not just a physical pandemic. And people have their physical hygiene, wash your hands and social distancing. People have no strategies for mental hygiene, right? And this chronic fear is like, it wreaks, wreaks havoc on our immune system, right? This whole area of psycho neuroimmunology, how our thoughts could affect our body stress levels and cortisol and adrenaline, not only does it shrink the brain, but you're right, it shuts off big portions of your critical thinking. And you talked about it yesterday also on the live, there are parts of your brains that determine how to feel about something, right? So you lose your autonomy because then you just react to things. And again, you gave away your power. But for me, and I know this is field tested not only with working with clients, but also myself. When I have no sleep, it doesn't matter what you eat, right? It doesn't matter if you're working out or not. That's like the master energy control center. So for me, I would always lean into my practices because it forced me to double down. Now I think there's a gift. I don't know if it's true enough, but it's been my experience where when people go through struggles that there's a gift in this. Like whether there's a gift of what's going on right now, true or false, I choose to believe it because then I'll operate from that, from that point of view and that perspective. Meaning what's the gift in me having learning challenges and fearful of public speaking? Well, I got really damn good at learning and public speaking because that's all I do now for a living. Right. What was the advantage that came out of this sleep deprivation experiment for 10 years? Now it's much better, is I could tell you two things immediately. It forced me to double down on everything I teach because I'm just documenting and telling people what I do, otherwise I won't be able to perform at the level that I do. And then number two, it's forced me also to be very selective in the things I say yes to. Like right now, there's nowhere I'd rather be. No one I'd rather be talking to right now. Because as we've heard, I'm so clear. Because when you have a finite amount of energy and wherewithal and vitality or bandwidth, you don't say yes to a lot of things. And so for me, I just focus on the things that I feel like I'm completely here and wherever I am, I'm completely there.
- [10:40]
Yeah, I mean, that's extraordinarily good advice for anybody. And I think that in an age of distraction, one distraction can just sort of SAP people's energy in a way that their probably not thinking about because it's just sort of slowly draining their time. Like, I think that everybody feels this overwhelming sense of, oh, I don't have a lot of time. But in reality they're either struggling with motivation like you're talking about, they don't have their purpose. Not sure why they're doing this. So they are. They're not. Because I think energy comes in two forms. One, I'm really glad in the book and what you just detailed there is at a biological level. And I think that people in our space particularly can really drift into like the universe and energy, like as some sort of mystical thing. But the reality is that energy is ATP. It is generated by the mitochondria in your cells. And if you don't do things to keep them functioning well, then you're literally not going to have the energy that you need. The other one is sort of a psychic energy, which is, I'm fucking excited. And so I get out of bed, like, people often will ask me, you know, how I'm able, because I sleep probably, I don't know, average six hours a night roughly. And I've sustained that for years. I don't set an alarm. So what is it that gets me out of bed? One of two things. Stress or excitement. That's it. And admittedly, sometimes it's stress and it isn't something, oh, like, I'm really excited to go and attack the day. But a lot of times it's just I'm fucking amped up about what I'm doing. I have that psychic energy of I'm looking forward to something. And that's something that nature has leveraged is the reward systems in your brain to get you to take action. So we seek delicious food, right? Because to keep us alive, things that are calorically dense, like the brain compels us to seek that out to remember where we found it. So it's, you know, people can really get excited about a bag of Doritos or something, you know, that. That has been engineered to trigger all of those psychological reward mechanisms to drive you towards it. Same with sex, right? It's things that nature has made intensely pleasurable to make sure that you do it. Now, you can build that into your life with things that are ideas, you know, telling stories. For me, that the idea that you can tell a story to somebody that would help them shape their own identity, which will then change their behaviors, which will then give them a better life than they would have had had they not encountered that idea. Again, I won't give away your Skype name, but your Skype name is a reference to a specific character and a character type. And it's like, exactly. You know, those kinds of things seep into people's subconscious and they become a part of who they view themselves as. And wrapping things in that bundle of excitement is exactly what moves people forward. So I'm really glad that you've talked about that. And people need to nail down their motivation if they're going to take the kind of action that they want. Because you're wasting a lot of time with distraction, which you're not even thinking about. You don't even necessarily have that sense of loss because you're not so fucking excited to make something come true that you're going to push through whatever you have to push through to make it real.
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I agree. And then that's part of it. Because once you have the motivation you need to know you have need the right mindset because somebody could be incredibly motivated and they could even have the methods to be able to know what to do. But I think that they're going to. When I talk about mindset, for me, functionally, it's this set of assumptions and attitudes we have about something, right? What would fall underneath mindset would be what we believe is possible. What would fall under mindset is what we believe we are capable of. What would fall under mindset is what we believe we deserve. Even somebody could be very motivated, they can even have the right methods, but they're going to bump up to a psychological ceiling of what they think they're worth financially or maybe they'll sell even
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self sabotage potentially go into that one for me. So this is something that I find really interesting. For a long time I didn't believe it was real and now I really do think it is real. How and why do people self sabotage? And that notion of like I think I'm worth this, how does that come about? How do people identify it and how do they get rid of it?
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So let's take relationships, right? Like if you had this meme or this belief that you weren't worthy of being in a relationship with Lisa or having this, this wonderful marriage, right? It would affect our behavior because then all the behavior is, is coming from that one belief and we would act accordingly. Just like if people believe that, you know that. Let's take another area in terms of our health. If they, or their memory, if people believe they just had a horrible memory, they could be very motivated and they even can know what to do. And. But if they feel like they're stupid or they're not, they're too old or they're never, there's, there's, they're not smart enough that will affect them taking action or even if they do the action, that belief like that four minute mile that they feel like that that's real, they'll never be able to exceed it until that belief gets changed, right? And so I do believe at some level. So the framework, and this is an explanatory schema that also liberates people. If you imagine three circles, mindset, motivation and methods, it's a Venn diagram, three intersecting circles. You need all three. Because what I wanted to do here, and I'm going to answer your question, is the book initially was all methodology and I wrote it cover to cover and it was all the tactics that I teach on focus on memory, on speed reading, on critical thinking, Skills on study skills. Then when I read I felt like this is a great self help manual. You know, this is a great textbook on learning how to learn. And are people going to get results with it? Very small percentage, I feel like will. And that's hard to say out loud because what's lacking there and what I added to it, it's really three books in one was the mindset and the motivation parts. Meaning that if you have the mindset of what's possible and you have motivation, where that crosses over you have inspiration. And there are people that speak on mindset. There's a great book I highly recommend called Mindset, right? There are people that speak on motivation or books on motivation and maybe where it crosses over you have this inspiration, you have inspirational speakers, you have inspirational movies and books. Now where mindset crosses over with methods, you have this thing called ideation, meaning mindset is what you believe is possible, what you believe that you deserve. It's all going on the mind and methods are how to do things, you know, technically how to do something. So that's ideation, right? But without motivation you're not doing any of those things. It just ideates, right? And we know that ideas are free and they're out there and that mean really hardly anything. What can mean more is where motivation crosses over with methods. Because of course there's a third eye, not just inspiration and ideation. Third eye is implementation. You're motivated and you know what to do methods so that you're in the area of implementation. But the goal is you're still stuck in that box. I say this box because people feel like now they're in a box, they're in a cocoon, they're in a cage. And this cage is 3D is 3 dimensional. And what keeps us in that box are these three forces of mindset, motivation and methods. Because you could have the greatest mindset. Everything is possible and be motivated but using poor crappy methods of marketing. Or they can be old antiquated way, just like with diamond, right? Like if they don't upgrade their, their skills and their competencies then they're going to be antiquated, right? Because everything is being disrupted. So if you use like for in the book I focus on accelerated learning because that, that's my field. So old ways of learning, all old ways of studying, rote repetition, sub vocal, you know, all those things that we learned, all those methods doesn't have to be upgraded. But people, again you need all three. Because if you have the mindset and the motivation and you're not using the methods like you're building a business, right? Like the old businesses, they have the mindset that, you know, these big corporations that everything is possible. They have a motivated team that's very, it's very sustainable, their energy and their purpose. But they could be using like old television commercials or billboard advertising or whatever they're using. They're not, they're not current methods. And so where all three of them combine is that fourth I, which is integration that I talked about in the beginning. Integration is just like you're fully aligned. And that for me is a limitless state. And what this model allows you to do, it allows you to have an explanatory schema of where you are limited, where you have placed a barrier or a border around what is possible. So the limitation, when you're not getting the result you want in business or in your relationship or in your body, you could say, okay, where is. Where am I being held back? Is it the mindset of what's possible, what I believe I deserve? Is it an area of motivation? Am I not connected to the purpose or the reason I'm doing these things? Or is it my lack of energy or do I need to chunk it down into small steps? Or the method, which is really the whole process and the whole strategy? And it also becomes so it allows you to pinpoint the area of constraint, so you could get rid of that bottleneck and upgrade your skills in those three areas. And it also becomes a role modeling framework, meaning that if somebody is very successful in an area and you want to have a mentor like you offer in Impact Theory University, right? Like real mentorship from people who have done this stuff? Then you can map over this framework and saying, oh, what is their current belief system that allows them to produce this result in terms of their mindset? What do they believe is possible? What do they believe about the world? How is their paradigm or their lens that they're looking through that makes this possible? Or you can dissect their motivations. Let's list the reasons that get them out of bed doing these things. Or how are they framing it in a way that taps into a pain or a pleasure? Or what are they doing to optimize their energy so they just will not stop? Or what are the small simple steps that they're taking? Or methodology? What are they doing for marketing, for leadership, for negotiation, for building a mass movement, Right? And so it becomes a role modeling tool also. Well, to dissect and look at the world. A blueprint, if you will.
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So talking about methodology, there's a story that you tell in the book. I actually don't think you told it in terms of methodology, but when you're talking, it triggered in my head about Bruce Lee. Man, you want to talk about somebody. So when I was a kid, I was fucking obsessed with Bruce Lee. I read the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, I was obsessed with Dragon, the Bruce Lee story that to me is super powerful. I was really excited to see him in the book. And the story that you tell about him winning, so in fact walk people through. So he ends up coming back to, or coming back technically to America because he was born here, comes back to America, starts teaching to people that aren't Chinese, which is like massively frowned upon. And then he has to fight. What was that whole thing about and what was the outcome of that fight?
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So Bruce. And it was wonderful because we had his daughter Shannon Lee, speak at one of our conferences recently on her father's approach towards mastery and learning and how he had all the books. And he was always. Everything was deep, deep practice, deep work. But culturally when he came here, he was not 100% Asian. So there was some biases with, with the Asian culture.
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Was he mixed race?
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A small part, yes. On one of his parents side. And so being accepted there, teaching in America, he wanted to teach everybody who wanted to be able to learn. And the elders there in that community basically said, you're not allowed to pass on this information. This is sacred. Should only be taught in our culture and our community.
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Community.
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And he was like, screw that. I'll teach anybody who wants to learn. Right? And they gave him an ultimatum, basically saying, well, if you wanted, if you do that, then there has to be. They challenge him to a battle where they bring in a martial artist deep in Kung fu to be able to fight him. And basically the stakes were that if Bruce won, he could teach whoever he wanted, but if he lost, he, he has to close down shop. And in that battle, his. And I've heard this, you know, having dim sum with, with his wife Linda, is that he actually he ended up winning. It took him about three minutes to get the guy to give up. And but he realized out of that that his current techniques and methodology wasn't enough. That that fight, three minutes is a long time to, to be, to be at it. As you know, he thought in every bone in his body, cell in his body, that that should have been a real knock down, like fast fight. And so it made him reevaluate his systems and his process. And he formed this, his training called JKD Jeet Kune do, which was an integration of the things that worked. It's kind of the approach where he's not emotionally attached to ideology or one methodology. He would create an integrated mixed martial arts approach, and he would take, you know, techniques and tools from fencing and Western boxing and wing chun, because all he cared about was what got the results, not with rules and trophies, but like real results on the street. And he built it from there.
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For kids growing up today, this is. And look, I am not a martial arts historian by any stretch of the imagination, but I have enough context to say this is really radical. This is pre MMA, like MMA. For anybody that knows the early days of the UFC, like UFC 1, if you get a chance, watch that shit. It was so crazy because you had people that were still purists. You had the guy that won, I think the first year trained or maybe second year trained in ninjutsu. I know that Brazilian jiu jitsu obviously ended up dominating for years and years and years until people figured that out. But you had a lot of purists, people that fought in a single style, and it wasn't really mixed martial arts for a long time. And so Bruce Lee's coming in when it was, like, ultra dogmatic, like, you were karate, for instance, to get your black belt. You weren't fighting in, you know, Mortal Kombat style. You were memorizing set routines, and you would show that you knew the routines and the positions and things like that. And so for him to come along and say, this doesn't make any sense. Like in the book, you tell the story, he wins, he beats this guy, spends most of the time just chasing him around the ring, trying to get him to fucking fight. Takes him three minutes, which is less than a UFC round. And yet in the end of it, Linda comes in and finds him with his head in his hands, and she's like, how are you negative about this? Like, you just won. You've earned the right to teach. And he was like, because my style is still so limited that the fight drug on way longer. I think the quote you give in the book is, my preparation hadn't prepared me for this type of fight. And I thought, that's so fucking brilliant. And so for a guy like, you want to talk about intoxication of certainty, like, to be so certain that what you're doing is right, to teach other people, to redefine the very notion of martial arts, not around forms and tradition, which of course, like, yo, at that time, like, tradition was everything for him to buck that. And jeet kune do translates loosely, I guess, from. And this is from reading the dao of jeet kune do is. He said it translates to defend by attacking. And I always thought, that's fucking genius. And he was, like, always trying to minimize the number of moves it took to beat somebody. And so he was like, well, instead of blocking, you know, a punch or a kick, what if you kicked it? Like, if you were to kick somebody's hand away or kick their foot away. And he was like, now you're doing damage in defending yourself. And I just thought, whoa, this is so smart. And I, Even as a little kid, I was captivated by somebody who stood so believed in what they were doing that they could tell everybody else no, because that was where I really struggled. Like, I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to follow the rules and be a good boy. I am by nature a rule follower. And so for me to become an entrepreneur, one of the first things I had to do was, like, break out of the notion that we have to follow these rules. And I found myself intoxicated by people like Bruce Lee who were like, fuck that. The rules don't apply to me. I'm going to do what works. And an obsession with efficiency, man, if you want to win, to be obsessed with what works is the only obsession to have.
- [27:53]
And also freeing yourself and liberating yourself from the critics and expectations and the old dogma. Because, you know, if we just. If we buy into those kind of opinions, we just fuel that and, you know, you'll lose your drive if you're being fueled by other people's expectations and opinions and, you know, these. So freeing yourself from the concern of others, I think, you know, I talk about the lies and freeing yourself from other people's, you know, like, looking bad and failure is a mistake or it's the opposite of success as opposed to it being part of. Part of success. Right.
- [28:31]
So I don't want to talk out of class, but I want to have dim sum with Linda Lee. What is she like? Like, I'm intrigued by the type of person. Again, this is what, 60s, I think when they got together, interracial couple would not have been. I mean, assuming that Dragon, the Bruce Lee story is in any way remotely factual. Her family did not want her dating him. So she's also somebody that doesn't mind going against trends. Like, what. What does she like?
- [28:58]
Yeah. So absolutely remarkable as you. I mean, I. So I'VE had dim sum. Like, sorry, dim sumha. I've had. I've had dinner or some kind of personal time with her a few times. She and Shannon actually, on his 70th birthday, took me to San Francisco, and we actually went into the. In Chinatown, into the hospital room that Bruce was actually born. And it was their very first time ever visiting it, because a few years later, they actually tore down the hospital. And so it was kind of a very, very special moment. But she is absolutely. She's absolutely remarkable individual to be able to, you know, I mean, her story in Dragon is pretty powerful for people who have seen it. One documentary I like, it's called I Am Bruce Lee, and Kobe's in it and all these other people that are in it about how they were inspired by this man who really reset the people's definitions of what was possible by his very existence, of what he could demonstrate, you know, both on camera and off. But Linda is the kindest individual. She. Her and her daughter run the Bruce Lee Foundation. So we've talked about opening up, like, a Bruce Lee museum. Same with the Stanley foundation, which I'm active in. Can you imagine a Stan Lee museum where you could go and all the things that he has accumulated over time, you know, from all the props from all the Avengers and X Men and everything else. But very kind individual, very wise. And she's a good martial artist. She studied with Bruce, and that's how they actually met.
- [30:43]
That's right. I forgot about that part. That's really interesting. Man, I am so hungry to do a story. So I've been trying and trying and trying to, with every angle that I can, to pitch them an idea for a comic, of course, that I want to turn into a movie, but to do a comic book with them. They've licensed the Bruce Lee name out some other comics that have not exactly been amazing, so I'm sure that's part of their hesitancy. But. Oh, my God, like, somebody. I'm shocked that I haven't seen that documentary because as a kid, like, you want to talk about somebody that I wanted to be. Oh, my God, like, that guy. There's just something about. So I don't know that you and I have ever really talked about. I was really hardcore into Taoism, so I. For a long time, I identified the way most kids would say, I'm Christian. I was like, I'm a Daoist, and I read the shit out of the Tao Te Ching. I was obsessed with that. Yeah. Like, that was my whole thing. So what ends up happening is. And, you know, for people that follow my story in terms of what we're trying to build, they'll underwriter, begin to understand why. So I watch Star wars, and this character Yoda, like, just fucks with me. Like, there's something about what he talks about that hits me in a way, you know, I mean, part of it is that he's a, you know, fucking puppet. And so that's cool already for a kid, but just the wisdom. I never would use that word as a kid, but it just. It really landed with me for some reason. And, like, do or do not. There is no try. You want to talk about something that from the moment I heard it, right to the power of your ability to speak and sound bites, it's like Yoda was the ultimate fucking soundbite machine. And that one just really stuck with me. So he plants, because basically, Yoda is God. I'm going to mispronounce his name terribly. Lao Tzu, the guy that wrote the Daodejing. So basically talks like him, if you've read it. The first time I read the Daodejing, I was like, george, I see you. I see where this is all coming from. So reading that, I was like, yo, this reminds me of Yoda, which then immediately made me, like, internalize everything. I get way hardcore into the teachings, the philosophies, because it was sort of mindset before mindset had a name. You know, talking about how to think and how to be in moments of stress and pressure and be like water, right? And literally Bruce Lee quoting the Dao de Jing. And so then you mix in Bruce Lee. And just like that whole era of my life is about that sort of martial philosophy and the irony of irony. So I actually studied martial arts really briefly in college, but I was so emotionally weak, dude, the first time I got hurt, I just quit. I was like, whoa, like, this is real. You could really fucking get injured. And I'm so, so, so sad that I didn't stick with it, because it was a period in my life where it would have just been perfect because I'm there, I'm on campus. It's College. You walk 10ft and you're in the place where you're studying. And I was just too weak, man. It's a sadness. I've thought about doing it. Do you know who Faras, as a hobby is? Do you know Georges St. Pierre? I don't know if you follow MMA at all. So George St. Pierre, one of the greatest fighters ever to live. So his trainer is a guy named George Faras, the hobby. And I went and trained for exactly one session with Faras. Faras is one of the most extraordinary humans I've ever met. He is a modern day Bruce Lee. This guy is a fucking philosopher. Extreme, fucking incredible, this guy. Anyway, I trained with him one time. It was amazing. And of course, I got injured again, and I was like, fuck. Like, just the. So I asked myself, this was incredible, but am I really willing to put the time and energy into fighting, like, figuring out what's wrong with my physiology, muscle weaknesses, whatever. Like, it's all my fault, right? So I know that there's no one to blame but myself. So I haven't done the things that I needed to do to get my body ready, that I could go and train and take it seriously. And then looking at the amount of time that it would take, and it's weird. It's one of the few things in my life where I'm just conflicted because part of me really wants to do it, and then part of me, he's like, fuck, does it really line up with the bigger goals that I have in my life? I'm actually not sure what the answer is. It might be better. It might be a better life for me if I did go and study and train. But there's that, like, there's something there, man. And I still find myself drawn to the way that Bruce Lee talked and the fact that he was such a fucking badass. There's something there, man. There's something to. What do you think about fighting? I think about fighting a lot. As a guy that can't fight, I think about it a lot. It's interesting. Where do you come down on that?
- [35:33]
Yeah, I'm mixed, like, literally split. Because the truth is that I watch the UFC and I watch occasionally boxing, and I watch all. You know, I grew up watching Sunday kung fu theater, so I have this affinity for. For that. And then I also know the damage that it could cause because I'm a brain health advocate at the same time. But I love people competing. And I think the physicality of learning something, you know, the discipline, the honor, the flexibility, I feel like getting it into your body, you learn things at a totally different level. It's not a logical thing. I think what made Bruce, like, fully integrated, you know, this amazing specimen of a fighter and a philosopher, I feel like the physical mechanics of him doing things, you know, drove in, like, a lot of the philosophy, you know, of water and everything else that he talked about when he talked about limits and not to put limits on any area of your life, because if you put a limit on one area of your life, it's going to pervade all the other areas of your life. I feel like martial arts was a training ground for a lot of that. And the, the physicality, I think is important. But I also agree that if you're going to do something, you want to do it world class. And having somebody coming over to the house a few times a week might not get you there. And then is it going to divert energy and attention and focus off of this enterprise and this empire that you want to build? But I have experimented with martial arts as, you know, the taekwondo classes as a child. I did years and years of aikido in college and post I did a year of JKD because I was so enamored. It was hard with my travel schedule to keep up in classes because, you know, when you're on planes and living in hotel rooms, it interrupts that routine. But I am fascinated by it because I think it's a great metaphor for life that if you're ground fighting and things like leverage, conserving energy, focal points, what's going to give you the most return? The elegance that Bruce had in his style in terms of optimizing his energy and the impact, those are all strategies that could be mapped out in business or in relationship relationships or in anything else. But I think the physicality is important. And so. But you know, knowing that we have a constraint of 24 hours in a day and what we choose to put our time and talent and our mind behind, you know, there's definitely opportunity cost for sure, But I still watch fighting for big fights. And because I like seeing people who are absolutely world class compete and do amazing things.
- [38:27]
There's another side to it that I find myself incredibly drawn to, which is this sort of Jordan Petersonian notion of a person should not be harmless, a person should be capable of great violence and yet keep that in check. And it's one of those things that, like, I don't feel like I am capable, as capable of violence as, as I would like to be. I am. Yeah. I mean, look, I've kept my strength up, I work out and so I definitely have a modicum of strength. But when you look at guys that are trained fighters, like, if I see a guy with cauliflower ear, I'm like, yeah, I'm not fucking with that guy. Like there is something to that. The ability to be violent. And going back to Farasahabi, I had him on Inside Quest. And he said, you know, one of the reasons that I am a trained fighter is I want to know if I am showing someone grace, if they're fucking with me or whatever, and I give them the grace to calm down, walk away, that it's a choice and that I'm not doing it because I couldn't hold my own. And I was like, fuck. That is such an indictment of myself. That, man, there are things that I let slide that I'm sure I let slide, because I'm like, I don't know how I would fare in this altercation. And when I worked out, that was a huge, huge focus of mine, was just being fucking strong enough to defend my wife. Like, that was how. In the early days, that was how I got in. And I showed up and I fucking pushed hard. Was like, I just. It's not okay to be as weak as I was when I started working out. And that notion of, like, making some things not okay. Like, it's not okay to be weak. And I think it's super important. I think that people overlook it. And so, yeah, like, I'm. I'm actually really into the ufc. I fucking love watching people fight. I love martial arts movies, Jim. Like your kung fu theater. I was all about ninja movies. The only thing I've ever dressed up for Halloween more than once, and I probably did it five times, was a ninja. I always wanted to be a ninja. Like, that was my fucking jam, dude. Any movie with a ninja in it, I was like, sign me up. The 80s was like, ninja fucking central. I was about all of it. All of it.
- [40:39]
Yeah. You pretty much just gave away my Skype name. In this. In this whole thing
- [40:45]
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Tom Bilyeu
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- [41:30]
It's. I'm.
- [41:30]
Jim Kwik
I'm.
- [41:31]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm the same. I did. There's a great teacher, a friend of mine named Tim Larkin, and he's out in Vegas, and he created Something called Target Focus Training. And it's controversial because he talks about not only the physicality of protecting yourself and loved ones because he's world class hall of fame cover of Black Belt magazine as instructor, but it could cause real physical harm or even, you know, extended harm or death. And it's controversial because he talks about the psychology of violence and how people, predators don't follow the same social norms. And I remember watching videos with him where these, the people, the predators, they don't abide by the same social norms as we do and they take advantage of those. And there was, I remember watching this video that just horrified me. It was the, it was a police officer cam, you know, a police woman, she pulls over this guy and you can see the cam from her car. And you know, she's going there and she's approaching the car and in there is the, is the, is the man and suspect and, and his little girl. And his little girl like, like very, you know, you know, and she was, you could tell she was having, you know, restraint because she didn't want to break any kind of social rules in front of her, you know, his daughter and this man just beat her and beat her, you know, because she had that, you know, those rules, you know. And another book like the Gift of Fear, Deborah, if you're familiar with that book, talks about especially for women to be able to trust their instincts that fear is actually a trigger. That part of you, some unconscious is picking up, but sometimes men or women, we suppress it and we don't trust that fear because we're picking up something that our conscious mind is not picking up and we feel like something is there and then something happens. And it's a whole great book called the Gift of Fear where fear is actually a resource for you and a signal to prepare or. And so some great resources there. And I would love to connect you with these individuals like Tim. It'll change your framework because he really gets into again the psychology and the drive of protecting yourself and the consequence of not being able to do so. I remember I did six months straight of Krav Maga what they trained Israel army to be able to do. And after six months I just couldn't do it. I think it was very, very effective. But you would have to put yourself in this angry. Like for me it was maybe the way I learned it in this angry state where you're just destroying whatever's in front of you. But you know, for me I needed to self experiment with it. So I trained in various methodologies I'm not world class in any of them, but I needed to feel what feels right for me, that a lot of
- [44:40]
Jim Kwik
people are just trying to change a lot of times. Like I just did a podcast on habits, right? How to be able to adopt new habits and also delete and get rid of, you know, break bad habits, right? And so a lot of people always want to make it usually make a change on behavior. They want to get themselves to work out, they want to get themselves to meditate, they want to get themselves to read more each day. They want to get themselves to X, right? Or they want to stop some behavior. They want to stop smoking, they want to stop eating this food. They want to stop. I always tell people, stop checking your phone the first hour of the day.
- [45:07]
Lisa Bilyeu
I love that.
- [45:08]
Jim Kwik
And I, and I just, that's like sacred to time for me, you know, because I, for me, that's for. I think that if you want to be an elite mental performer or you know, real life superhero, you don't want to start off by checking the phone. We talked about this in the past. Because you're training yourself to be reactive, right? You're getting your dopamine, you're frying your nervous system with all these likes, shares, comments and everything else like that you've said.
- [45:28]
Lisa Bilyeu
If I'm not mistaken, you sell your sovereignty.
- [45:30]
Jim Kwik
We do.
- [45:31]
Lisa Bilyeu
If you start by checking your phone, I love that so much.
- [45:34]
Jim Kwik
Because you're reacting in firefighting to everyone's like all, everything that everyone wants. So you're not really setting, you're not living, you know, it's. You've heard this many times, right? If you want to, you, you win the first hour of the day to win the rest, you know, when you win the day, right? And so anything you want to stop. So let's say you want to stop checking your phone right in the morning. Then there's certain, like that's a behavior, right? But there's so many other elements to be able to change because some most behaviors don't stick, right? And so like what I'm thinking about when I want to transform or transcend or make a real positive change. I'm looking at all the other areas of ourself. So I'm looking at for example, our environment are people setting up their environment to win. So change doesn't just happen at this level of behavior, but you have to change the environment. So for example, if you want to stop eating a certain food, it helps to be able to not have that food in your home. So you change the environment. If you want to read more, it helps to help set up your environment where you have the books readily available where you're going to read it because they perform. You know how I approach habit change is this area of motivation and this trigger, right? You want to trigger it to help remind you to do the behavior right. So are you setting up the environment in a way that triggers the behavior that you want? But not only the environment is like the when and the where but it's also behavior is also the capabilities. Because a lot of people want to change a behavior but they're not training in the abilities. What I love a lot about your work and your passion is the area of be able to like ability those acquisition new abilities for yourself and also that could also benefit the rest of the world. But most people aren't training those habits and those capabilities. But also another level of change that we need to address. Let's say everyone someone's watching this and they have a thing that something they want to change and it's not, it's not sticking. Then maybe it's not, it's the environment. Maybe you could check about your habits but maybe it's your beliefs and your values. Some people will not get themselves to read every day because they don't value reading every single day, right? Some people won't. Let's say the behavior they want to change is. We did a podcast on how to remember names. I could teach them step by step on how to remember the name of most people that they meet. Yet they won't do it because they don't value it or because that's not important to them or they don't believe that they can. Right? Just like we talked about earlier saying your brain is like a supercomputer and your self talk is a programmer runs. If you tell yourself not go to remember your names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because your program is super computer not to. They don't have a belief that enables that. So when I say all behavior is belief driven. If you want to do this behavior, whatever it is, journal whatever it is, then you need a belief that allows that to happen. Because that's the program that allows.
- [48:02]
Lisa Bilyeu
So how do you get that belief? Because you're going to feel like you're faking it. And that's where most people stop, right? They think okay, I get it. I hear what Jim is saying that if I am able to to shift my belief then I can get a different behavior, but I don't believe it. So now I'm just sort of faking it. How do you help people overcome that?
- [48:18]
Jim Kwik
So some people approach it like there's a quote where they fake it till they make it.
- [48:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Right.
- [48:23]
Jim Kwik
So my thing with belief is, like when I do trainings in groups or online, my favorite way of changing a belief is getting them to do something they never thought they could do because it opens up another pod possibility.
- [48:37]
Lisa Bilyeu
Like what?
- [48:38]
Jim Kwik
So, for example, in 1954, Roger Bannister, he broke the four minute mile, right? And so, which is amazing, right. Throughout human history, nobody can run a mile in less than four minutes. Now, if you, if you look into it, how he was able to do it is he would visualize himself crossing the finish line, looking at the clock, and it says 3:59. Because he knew that success is an inside out process, that first it had to happen in here in order for Apton out there. Right. Dr. Wayne Dyer has a famous phrase where it's not, oh, I'll believe it when I see it. It's like, I'll see it when I believe it. Because it's the opposite. Right. And so I always like modeling the outliers where most people kind of just like kind of dismiss them. I was like, well, what's going on there that allows this person to get this kind of result? Right? And so with Roger Bannister, he saw it in here, be able to produce it outside, just like any innovation innovator or inventor or writer or any creator. Right. But what was interesting is after that, what happened? Nobody could do it. From the beginning of humanity, all of a sudden, one person does it. What happens after that?
- [49:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Everybody.
- [49:39]
Jim Kwik
Yeah, everyone starts doing it. And so that's the thing. Now what, what happened? Was there a big change that year in, you know, training methodology and nutrition or. No, it was a change of belief, Right. Because the belief back then was if you ran a mile less than 4, 4 minutes, not only would you die, it was your heart would explode in your chest. And like, think about like that would. And I'm a runner, right? That would keep me not just running, that wouldn't keep me from running a form, that would keep me from running, period. Right, right. And so my, my thing is like, that was a change of a reference. I was just shook up a belief. So my goal with people when it comes to learning is get themselves to do something they never thought they could do. And then it opens up another possibility. It literally opens up their, their nervous system for something. What else could be possible? Now I would also say that it all plays together where it's not easy necessarily just to change a belief overnight. Now that could be a belief because it's like a meta belief about what beliefs are. But people, there's technologies like inception, like a dream or a dream or a dream. But I do believe that we have more power to influence our thoughts and our beliefs. And so there are a lot of tools and techniques out there that are resources. Like when I grew up, I, you know, we didn't have any. We had no money, right. I had no education because I was very learning challenged. I didn't know any. Anybody, right? So I feel like it's not. When people. That's where they'll go though, when they, when they, when there's a gap. Stop. Gap between where they are and where they want to be. They'll say, oh, I don't have the money or I don't have the education or the intelligence out of the network or anything else like that. And you know what, you know, as for all incredible success you've had and the value you've created for the world is that it's not about resources, right? Because we know a lot of people who didn't have any resources that were able to impact the world. It's about our internal resources. And what I'm saying is optimizing our environment, optimizing our behaviors, our capabilities, our beliefs and our values and our identity, right? That at the highest level, our identity. Because you can't just change your belief or your value or your behavior, even if you don't believe you're that kind of person. You know, that's why I kind of always go to the superhero mythos, because I want people to claim that identity. I call it the superhero you. That version of ourselves that we're not waiting for Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman. It's like, you are Wonder Woman, you are Batman, you are Superman. It's just we have to commit ourselves to be able to unleash that dude.
- [51:56]
Lisa Bilyeu
I'm a huge believer in identity driving behaviors. I have a hard time explaining to people though, how to adopt a new identity. How do you. How have you done it in your own life? I think that's the best.
- [52:10]
Jim Kwik
I mean, my identity. I mean, obviously this is a work in progress, right? I would say that I would start with the. They call it the two smallest words in the English language, but they're the two most powerful words in the English language. It's I am, right? I am. Because whatever you put after that determines your destination or your. Your destiny, right? And I think Your identity is who you believe you are. And I feel like when we're talking about playing to the edge of our limits and really playing there and living in that place where we're stretching, you know, I do believe and I get inspired every time I see your insta story. You're like, it's like 4:30 and you're working out, you're doing your, your work, but that's who you are, right? You don't have to fight it because you can't imagine yourself not doing that. And that's the level of that I, that I think is once most important. So I would think about going through an exercise and I've done this with friends, I've had them sit or in groups, we do these conferences and such. And I find I have people pair up with someone they don't know and what they're going to do is they're going to do an exercise. I am, and they're going to talk about. They're literally going to fill in the blanks for three minutes until I call time. So you have to go like, and you could do this right now. Like, if you were to fill in I am blank, like I would say, you know, I am a student, I am a teacher, I am a son, I'm a, you know, all this and. But eventually I'll get to a point where I don't know what else to say. And that's what the real interesting answers come out of, right? Because it's a great way for networking and knowing somebody else. But it also shows us this really big tapestry of our life to the point that we've gotten to right now where we could. I relate to these aspects of ourselves and I think it's a nice exercise when we talk about self awareness, being a superpower, really knowing who we think we are. Because if we don't believe that we are public speaker or we're a great parent or we're a great learner or genius, then we'll never be able to reach our full potential because that will always be the ceiling that we bump up against. And also, you know, when I'm talking to individuals and I'm interviewing them on our podcast or just talking to individuals like this, I would be thinking about especially high performers because I think that genius leaves clues and I believe that it could be replicated. If you're willing to put in the work and the learning and the discipline to be able to do that, then I want to know, really, I want to know their beliefs. I want to know what they value. Because if I don't know that, if I'm just working on step by step hacks and everything else, it won't stick because it's missing a huge part. So I want to model like their behaviors, their values, their beliefs, and also who they think they are that allows them to do those, accomplish those amazing things in their life.
- [54:34]
Lisa Bilyeu
And what are some of the clues that genius leaves?
- [54:37]
Jim Kwik
So it's interesting when I'm talking about these levels of change, the identity level is the who, right? You know, all the five W's and the H we learned back in school. The identity is who somebody is. When we're talking about beliefs and values, that's the why, why they do what they do. When we're talking about capabilities, that's the how, that's the habit, right? The skill acquisition. When we're talking, the behavior, that's the what, the what they're doing, right? And then when we're talking about environment, that's really the where and the when, right? So I'm always going back with, I want to create change, create a new habit, create a new level of learning for somebody. I'm addressing those different levels and if I, if I ignore one with somebody else or myself, then it's not going to stick, right? Because you're not gonna have that congruency where it's gonna affect where it becomes second nature. And so going back to this, I think if I'm modeling genius and genius leaves clues, I'm thinking about, okay, where are they and when are they doing these things? So certain people are early birds, some people are night owls. So I could teach people like I teach people, people how to read one book a week. I really think leaders are readers that in order to stay competitive in today's day and age, if somebody has decades of experience and they put it into a book and you can sit down and read that in a few days, download decades into days. I mean, I'm preaching to choir for everyone who's watching, but that's a superpower, right? That's a huge advantage. And so I'm thinking about, but some people, when I'm telling them to practice and I get These results in 30, about four or five weeks, where it's permanent, where they could reach read 300% faster with the same or better comprehension, essentially read something in 20 minutes that normally takes normal people an hour. But the reason why, but you have to practice. But some people will practice at inopportune times of the day and they won't get the same Results. So part of it is the self awareness, knowing your, what they call your chronotype. When's the optimal time to do this? Depending on your body type, there's certain times of the day it's better to work out. There's better times of the day to be able to make love. There are better times of the day to be able to read, to check email, to ask for a raise. So I would think about like if geniuses found they find their element, their sweet spot, and they set up their routines and their rituals throughout the day to be able to align with their time when they're most productive, right. If they're not, if they don't have a lot of energy in the morning, working out is probably not as good as doing some other time. So the when and the where in setting up your environment for success because all your triggers are there that allow them. So I think geniuses set themselves up so for example, they have their last. But they only use their laptop for work. And it's anchored. That's part of their environment. It's anchored to get them into flow states to be able to write or be productive. They don't use their laptop to watch binge on Netflix, right? They have a very. They have an iPad that they use when they do that because that's the state that they want to anchor for that. And they don't use that iPad to do work. You know, setting up your environment like your bedroom. Like we just did a whole episode on sleep hacks and how to optimize your sleep because that's a big, you know, personal challenge for me for many, many years because I had suffered from sleep apnea. It was a breathing disorder. I stopped breathing 200 times a night for at least 10 seconds, which is the equivalent of somebody coming in and choking and suffocating you 200 times a night. And so I would actually, the reason why I'm so adamant about productivity and learning hacks is because for the longest time, for literally five years straight, and you know this, I've slept about 90 minutes to two hours a night total. And you know how you feel when you get like one bad night's sleep? Sleep and how like where your focus is your energy level and your. How I get these horrible migraines and it's forced me to double down in my practices, you know, in terms of like, I have a limited amount of time, I have to focus on the things that really matter, resources and stuff. But anyway, going back to like, my bedroom is sacred space, right? It's I don't do work in there. I keep it because that's my trigger to be able to rest, go into parasympathetic space. I set up my environment so I have my blackout curtains. I'm at my grounding pad. So it's to optimize my restful sleep that I do get. So environment. So genius leaves clues. They set up genius environments for themselves. And then the behaviors, most people know because they're intuitive. You know, these people are investing themselves, they're investing in self care. I always tell people that self love and self care is not selfish. A lot of people, you know, they're there for their friends and their family and their clients and everybody else, but they're not refilling their cup. So I think that we have to be, you know, grow givers, meaning we grow so we have more to give to other people, so we have more impact with other individuals. So the behaviors are reading each day and putting together your to do list. And I think having your not to do list is so important. Having been sleep deprived for so many years, you know, I think a lot of people, I'm super sensitized to it, but I think one of the success rituals people should have is just going through and keeping a consistent not to do list. And I think the most successful genius level individuals, one of the clues that they leave is they're not to do list is bigger than their to do list. Right? They don't check their phone in the morning. They don't take in, you know, everything is hell yes or it's hell no.
- [59:05]
Tom Bilyeu
Right?
- [59:05]
Jim Kwik
That's their filter system. They don't, you know, they say no to good so they can yes, yes to great. So the behaviors, then you have the habits which. And then you have the beliefs and the values and beliefs and the values. You know, because I watch this is one of the reasons why I watch your show because I'm just hearing all the time you're eliciting these amazing beliefs about, from achievers in all, every area. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, you have Wyclef there and like melon, you have all these amazing individuals. But you see that there's a pattern that's there, right? And there's an art and. But there's a science to it there and there's an art to it and how they express themselves. And then I also do believe that some of the most successful geniuses. And I say geniuses, not just. I'm not talking about iq, right? I'm talking about an incredible you know, artist. I'm talking about an athlete. I'm talking about an advocate in some area is they haven't. They're clear about their identity, about who they are and who they are to the world. But I know what they do commit is they do the work, and they're committed to lifelong learning. And I feel like that learning. I always tell people, and we had this conversation that if knowledge is power, then learning is your superpower. And I think it's a superpower that we all have. It's just that we're not taught. Like, recently, we had Quincy Jones in our audience, and I had to pull him on stage, right? And I was just like. I was like, I have to ask you, you know, we are the World and Michael Jackson and Oprah, like, you know, what did you. How did you overcome these challenges that. These problems that you had to be able to create this, you know, this legacy? And he looked at me, he's like, jim, he's like, I don't have any problems. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm like, you're 84. You have no problems? And she's like, no, I have puzzles. And I was like, wow. Like, that little shift of vocabulary changed everything from. Yeah, because puzzles are like riddles. You could solve them, right? There's answers for it. And it was a change of perspective. And that was the thing about growing up with superheroes. Reading these comic books late at night when I was so impressionable is, for me, a superhero more than anything, represents hope. Do you know what I mean? That one person can make a difference. And a lot of superheroes go through a lot of challenges, right? When you think about the most popular superheroes, they're all orphans like Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Spider Man. They all lost their parents, you know, and they go through these big challenges, but through it, they found their dharma, they found their mission. And I find that if someone's watching this and they haven't found it quite yet, maybe I have a belief that their mission and that people's mission, their purpose and their patent is looking for them also. But most of us aren't sensitized to it, you know, because it's coming in different forms. Forms, and we're not open to it as much. And so my thing when it comes to success rituals and high performance and making an impact is that we all have that sovereignty. We all have that power. And whenever we put it out there and give it out to somebody else, like, we're a thermometer, right? The Metaphor I always talk about, it's like we're either thermometers or we're thermostats. And a thermometer, you think about the functionality of it, it just reflects what the environment is giving it. It's just reflects the temperature and stuff. But a thermostat is different. It sets a standard, it sets a goal, it sets a vision and the environment changes along with it. And I feel like our happiness, our joy, our level of fulfillment, our success is all dependent on where we put the locus of control. And I feel like we have more power than we realize in these cases. And it's hard because we have to fight media, we have to fight marketing. That's always telling us about all the things that are going on the world. But we live in an abundant universe, right? I mean, we talk about the matrix, you know, which pill people are going to take, and that determines everything. And every single morning you determine what color pill you're going to take.
- [62:36]
Lisa Bilyeu
I have to say it is fascinating to watch you deal with the sleep issue because going into it I wondered how your beliefs were going to play, right? So a lot of times the belief will kick in and when the problem is solved relatively easily, the belief is intact and everything is right with the universe. But dude, you had to push for years and years and years, like you were saying 400 things that you tried to overcome that. How did you stay focused, committed? Like how do you push through the dark times? That's really my question because your entire life is like a story of grit and pushing through the darkest of times.
- [63:22]
Jim Kwik
And I would say what keeps me going is I have a belief that everything can get better. Like that's my self talk. When it comes down to what my primary belief is, is I feel that, that things can get better because otherwise if I didn't, then I would just give up, right? And I have too many examples of friends and family and just people I don't know, which are just friends of my mind that have superseded much more difficult situations than I have. The other thing it's a helped me to do is really focus on the rituals and the routines, the habits, the abilities that really matter. You know, the 8020 rule. Because when I have a certain amount of energy, I can only do a certain amount of things and I want, I need to get more back. And I'm still doing the job, quote unquote of most, you know, three or four people, you know, going on stage and traveling to Dubai, you know, like the kind of things that we do. But it forces me to focus on the things that's going to give maximum return. And you know, and I think we do teach the things that we need to learn the most. I think the best teachers are the best students. And I know I'm going through this like I had surgery recently to correct this. And so my sleep has jumped up from 90 minutes and 2 hours to about 4 hours, which doesn't sound like a lot. It's not perfect, but it's progress. And that's my standard. Like I'm just, I'm never looking for perfection because I don't think that the standard exists. I'm just looking to make incremental progress. You know, when I wake up in the morning I have my daily routine and it's so fine tuned because I think a lot of people suffer from decision making fatigue. Right, that, and this is very strong research saying that you can only make a certain amount of good decisions a day and after that is spent, you can't anymore. And that's really been fine tuned in the medical field with surgeons and such in terms of seeing their, you know, where they're making their errors and stuff with early on in the day or later in their days and stuff like that. But we also as entrepreneurs or as employees and executives or as parents and we all can make a certain amount of decisions. And that's why, you know, people like Mark Zuckerberg or Tony Hsieh, they wear the same T shirts and sweatshirts all the time because they don't want to spend, you know, use up one of their decisions thinking oh, what am I going to wear today? Right. And so my goal is to streamline my life, put the routines the first hour of the day and the last hour of the day. I really micromanage to the point where it's habitual, I don't even have to think about it. And then because those are the times of the day where I could really have the most impact because later on in the middle of the day, you know, team members need this, there's firefighting, this client needs that. But the first hour, the last hour I really want to control. So all this really helped develop grit and resilience in my body so I could have the ability to persevere. And also I stand guard to my brain all the time. What goes in, I don't watch like a lot of the negative news and all the unmarketing. I really focus like I watch and I listen to your show and maybe a handful of little of things I read each day because I need to keep it positive. I want hope and I'm looking for help. I'm looking for inspiration and also instruction.
- [66:13]
Tom Bilyeu
Skillset having like, it has utility. It is meant to be like this. It lets you do things. Like I fuck, man. I really come up empty when I try to find a more powerful way to say it. But skills let you do things and that is powerful. And that's like, if I really stop and think about what's the. One of the ideas that I really want to plant in the cultural subconscious, it's that it's go out and learn something. And that thing that you learn lets you do things that are meaningful to you, right? And so architecture becomes the most obvious example. You can build a fucking house, you can build a building, you can build, can build a bridge. And you know, the metaphors sort of make themselves with actually being able to build a bridge. But that stuff doesn't happen by accident, but that you, you have to set like this high degree of intention and then go about doing it. But I am beyond obsessed with that. And that to me is power. So this is a whole long way of saying I think that when I talk about power, it turns some people off. But then in that, in fact this is. You talk about this a lot, about forgetting. Why do you think? Because this to me is a key example of that moment where you actually need to let go of your preconceived notions around what power is in order to actually claim power in your life.
- [67:30]
That is very powerful. And I know in a world full of short form social media and sound bites, people sometimes were trained even as, you know, writers or bloggers or putting people putting out content. And we have stuff rehearsed. One of the reasons why I could appreciate this show is just you throw people off tilt and they have to go raw and it becomes real. I definitely am guilty of using alliteration and mnemonic devices to simplify concepts so people could hold on to it. Because I feel like if people can't get their attention around it, but then I also want them to go deep because if they don't do that actual digging and the actual work, you know, that's what really ingrains it into their being, into their nervous system through repetition. But people don't want to hear that. They get like, I know that already, you know, they get bored of the fundamentals. They want the next thing that's super sexy. Like Tom, really, seriously, really, what did it take to build that company or build that your. Your social media and people don't want to know that it was like sacrifice, that it was deep work, that it was time. Like, you know, when people see all the glory and everything else, they don't see that below that proverbial meme iceberg of habits and skill development and everything else. And so for me, it's always kind of treading that line. But I'm glad in this conversation and I apologize for the happen to be in the middle of Manhattan. As the time we're having this conversation. It's an opportunity to have even more focus. And we're training under real conditions, for sure.
- [69:14]
That's actually a concept that I find really interesting. I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. I forget right now. Oh, I'm forgetting around you. I actually always feel a little guilty when I forget shit around you. So the notion of don't think of things as performance. Think of them as an opportunity to practice. And so I'll do this a lot, especially in Impact Theory University. When we're filming that, what people don't see is around the fucking camera. People are like scrambling. Especially in the beginning, we had a lot of technological hurdles that we were trying to overcome. And so the fucking team is going mad, right? They're putting things up on a screen, but they don't. They're not sure how it's working. So things are like flashing up and disappearing. The person running the teleprompter has never done it before. So it's like moving up and down. And then I've got people like walking around with. Cause something like went out and I'm like, I'm gonna keep doing this shit. Like nothing is happening around me. And it's such a powerful moment if you flip. Cause most people are like, fuck, this is performance. Cause we do them live. So there's people here watching live. I've only got one shot. We don't edit this shit. So like, fuck. And they start panicking and their performance actually goes down. But if you switch out of. This isn't performance. This is just practice. I'm gonna do hundreds of these things. So none of them are sort of the final one. I'm going to just practice. Like, how Zen can I be with like all this chaos around? And then it becomes fun. But it's like when you're thinking, fuck, I've got to nail this right here, right now. That's when people spiral. That's when your performance goes down. Because there's like this huge chunk of your brain is panicking. Basically you're kicking in to anxiety. You're in fight or flight mode. So like you said, performing into real world conditions and not looking at it as like, oh, this is my one chance to do something. It's really powerful.
- [70:54]
Yeah. Even, even writing or having this conversation right before we got on, I was like, you know, I was, I was saying to your team, like, I don't use Skype. This is not something that's new. It's, you know, I always use Zoom. And I was, it wasn't loading on my main computer and I was telling you that intelligence is context dependent. You know, I could do really well in some areas and in some areas I have not developed that skill set. But do you feel like when you are on like right now, right. This is the recording, do you feel like you've built that skill set well?
- [71:33]
So I on this thing in particular, the ability to stay focused and to let go. I am constantly practicing. But yeah, I think that I am pretty good at it. I'm pretty good at it though, because I do things in my life all the time that I look at as practice and one that I'll give people that this is. You want to talk about something that's overlooked. And a big part of this is because I failed to turn Siri off. So that my bad. So she may, every time I say H e y, she's gonna pop up. So. Growing up in the 80s, video games were frowned upon. Parents were like, you're gonna rot your brain and all this stuff. And then of course we watched, you know, people generate enormous fortunes. It eclipsed the film industry. It's just, it has become a beast of such untold proportions. I don't think people understand really how big video games are. And part of the reason is there's, there's real neurological training that's going on. So I play first person shooters, or I should say I play a first person shooter called Destination. Fucking love it, man. It is so much fun. I have a ton of fun with Lisa, my sister, and we're a fire team. It's amazing. So there's that, right, the family bonding. But the part that I use all the time is I know on the other end of that is a 14 year old kid in Ohio that wants to kill me and then teabag my body. And that is so frustrating and it's so obnoxious and it fucking literally lights a fire. So in those moments I'm like, this is a perfect time because if you elevate, like if you click into Fight or Flight, if you let yourself get panicky, then Your performance goes down. So it's like literally every weekend for three hours a day I'm in this mode of I'm practicing staying calm in what could be a sort of fight or flight moment. The cool thing about video games is like I'm constantly asking myself, okay, this whole practice idea, how do you get the stakes up? Because when there's no stakes then you don't have the real emotional reaction that you would. And it's actually dealing with the emotional reaction is the very fucking thing you need to practice. So video games are a rad way of you have this completely false sense that there's actually something that matters here, that there are real stakes and I'm trying to win, I'm trying to avoid that 14 year old just mopping the floor with me. And because I treat it as practice, I get this like real world meditative thing over and over of when I most every impulse in my being is to heighten is to tense or to tense is to clench. I actually practice letting go, relaxing, being more effortless, finding flow. And it's been huge. So in moments being on stage, it is literally I'll think about playing video games as I'm walking on to speak to, you know, 3,000, 4,000 people and it's like, ah, relax, expand.
- [74:19]
That's interesting because I was going to ask you the question, can you see that map out into other contexts the training that you're doing on the couch playing that first person shooter shows up on stage, it shows up on video.
- [74:34]
It does. It shows up everywhere.
- [74:36]
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- [75:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you? So I know in the book you talk about Flow, how do you instigate flow? How do you trigger that? Is that something that you think about or is that just. You've got so many hours now that
- [75:46]
it just happens for certain things completely. When I go on stage, I get butterflies.
- [75:53]
Do you really still? I can't believe I'm actually asking you that because people think that about me. But I'm actually surprised you are so at ease on stage.
- [76:02]
Yeah. So you know what it is, is as soon as I get on stage, I get triggered because I put my focus on service because I can't feel fear and focus on them at the same time. And also those stakes are very high, like in your video game, whether they're real or they're imagined. My stakes are I remember being in that audience 25 plus years ago and how a speaker changed my life and I'm talking to that person and I put my mind in there even before going on stage to put my, my mind at ease. I'll go around and sit in various chairs if I have permission and time to do that. So I could see it from their point of view. And I actually go through a video game in my mind like this little mental rehearsal as if. And I would see myself performing from their point of view. And I don't know what it does, but it paints an environment for me when I'm on stage to be able to see it from their perspective and hopefully be a better teacher because of it. See from different points of view. But I am nervous right before I go on to the point where sometimes I want to throw up and this could be even. And these are just triggers. And I know this is something I'm personally working on, but I feel a moral obligation based, I swear to God, in deepness of my soul. I'm thinking like, shame on me if I don't go out there and do the best that I can. And I let these people down who pay good money, who pay, you know, who are investing their time to be there. And maybe there's one person that's really. Their life depends on something that I'm saying whether that's true or not. I put the stakes up there. Much like a 14 year old kid that I might be playing video games on and want to level up, but it is much like a video game. I grew up playing video games. As a kid I had a lot of escapism because I felt like I was deficient in so many ways. And so comic books, I would escape video games, but not video games. Like today. I honestly haven't embraced anything in this generation because the one time I did with my nephew, it was just. I couldn't keep up. I just couldn't. But I grew up playing video games, and right after high school, taking the bus to Nathan's Hot Dogs and putting in quarters upon quarters, growing up on Atari and Colecovision and playing Zelda and solving those problems because it would take me out of my world. And that was more real for me. Even the metaphor of Dungeons and Dragons, I don't know if you ever indulge in it. It's not a video game. It was just like this imaginary role playing game. But I had a piece of paper and I had attributes like, this is your strength on numbers 1 to 20. This is my dexterity 1 to 20 or 18, or this is my intelligence, my wisdom. And I found by going on these quests that by getting experience, I could level up. And the dungeon master who managed it would give me an extra point here, a point there, and I would be able to seeking treasure, to be able to have that power in that imaginary setting in that world. But it's interesting that if I can map that out and turn the world into a game and occasionally I'll treat it like that. Where this is. I'm getting experience points here for going on stage or every single time I take a cold shower, or every time I do something that's difficult for myself and I force myself and I don't back down. I built my career on that. It wasn't always easy. When I got started, because there was no Internet, I would literally rent space in a church or somewhere, put flyers, go door to door to door to be able to do that. But it was just the same methodology and mindset. It was just, how do I serve this person here, this person here?
- [79:41]
And it's just, I want to go back. So you said that you were sitting in the theater or whatever at one point and the speaker said something that changed your life. What was that? Who was that?
- [79:52]
Yeah, so it's interesting because there's this Asian dude. I honestly don't even know who the speaker was, but I was there and for some reason I just got it. It was just. It wasn't even. It was what they said, but it was also how they were presenting. Now, this is over 25 years ago, and I was just this, you know, this punk kid that didn't know anything for anything, but I would, you know, I was going to a state school and on the weekends I would get a bunch of my friends together at college. And instead of going out drinking and doing everything else, we put money in to rent a car, to drive two and a half hours to go to, like, a seminar. And at this seminar, there was some guy that was just speaking. And for some reason, I just got that I had responsibility. Meaning that I think some of the greatest speakers, they can inspire you, that's one thing. But if you could identify with something that they're saying and know that I'm at. Cause I think that that's a fundamental core belief that I have, that I created my whole life, that meant that through the choices or some way, I am responsible. And that was the message, is that I'm at.
- [81:01]
Cause I love that. So we were doing an Instagram live the other day, you and I. You actually asked a really cool question, which was, if you could plant one idea in people's mind, what idea would you plant? And you said that. That you're responsible for your own life, which I think is extraordinarily important. Extraordinarily important. Maybe one of the most important ideas that somebody can have. Why do you think that matters? And why do you think most people don't do it?
- [81:26]
Well, I think having these global ideas or these. I talk about in the book, like, seven Lies. And it's basically these false beliefs, these ideas lie. Again, it's an acronym. It's an easy thing to remember.
- [81:40]
You got to give people the acronym, man. Come on.
- [81:42]
I do, because. Because sometimes I only have, you know, five minutes with somebody or something. But a lot, they really do work.
- [81:50]
So my beef with stuff like that is only that it's so facile that people then begin to discount it. It's fucking important, right? Things that rhyme, which is just one example, things that rhyme appear something like three times more true, or, I mean, some absurd stat where it's like the human brain is so hungry for a mnemonic device of some kind, something that it looks for those patterns, and when there's a pattern, it retains the information. So trust me, I'm not denigrating. I'll fucking use an acronym wherever I can get one. So anyway, lie is an acronym you use in the book. What does it stand for?
- [82:27]
And it stands for limited idea, entertain. And it's not necessarily true. It's just that something that we're giving energy to or giving attention, we're deciding in that moment that this is. Is something that that is true. The other thing about acronyms and mnemonics is they're easy to spread. And my goal is for. To teach you know, a mother so that they could teach their spouse or they could teach their kids because it's easy to be able to repeat. And it becomes mimetic, kind of like this virus of the mind, if you will. And it goes, goes on and on and on. But going back to these global beliefs, I think that if you change some of these core beliefs, there's a ripple effect, meaning that if you believe that you are solely responsible for your life, that you are not a victim, that you are creating your reality, then that changes all these sub beliefs, like for example, that if you aren't making the money that you, that you want to make or that your, your relationship is. You feel like there's turmoil there or you have some health challenges or whatever. If I take responsibility, it changes all these like, singular beliefs about who's at fault or what I could do in that moment to improve my health. It gives me at least my, my, my, my agency back. You know, we talked about in an early episode of Impact theory or, or InsideQuest, we talked about like your sovereignty. Right. I feel like a lot of people give away their power to their family, to their friends, based on their expectations or their opinions of you, how you're going to look and what failure is interpreted, you know, as. And it slows us down, you know. And so this global belief that I am responsible is a nice way of. Since I've had that for so long, then it's just like I'm responsible. And I know I'm not responsible for the economy and what's going on right now, but by me claiming it then I feel like I have some power over it.
- [84:09]
Dude, now you're into a zone. I'm so passionate about this and it is. I can't fathom that this is a con. I keep wanting to say conversational. That is not the word. Controversial.
- [84:21]
Wow.
- [84:22]
It's a controversial idea. I can't fathom that's true. But when I first started, like becoming, I'm going to start putting my ideas out into the world. I started blogging and I wrote a blog that I thought, you can't imagine how excited I was to write this blog. I was like, oh my God, if I had known this back in my early 20s, it would have sped my life up so much. I'm like, okay, what's the best way to explain this? And so I write this article called it's all youl Fault. And I'm writing about like, okay, imagine you get hit by a drunk driver. And I like, do this whole thing and the Punchline was, you decided to get in a car. Because I paint this whole picture of you stop at a stoplight, you pull in between two cars, there's a car in front of you, cars on either side. Your car breaks down, your horn stops working, you see somebody barreling behind you, they crash into you. Whose fault is that? And I was like, no one is going to say it's your fault. Not the insurance company, none of your friends, your parents. Nobody is going to say it's your fault. But I'm here to tell you it's all your fault. I was like, man, I'm empowering you. This is the most amazing piece like, of information ever. Like, this is so great because it means you could have done something differently or you can do something differently in the future. I'm not saying beat yourself up. I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm just saying, like you said, retain your agency. People flipped the fuck out. People wrote in, you're victim blaming.
- [85:38]
What the fuck?
- [85:39]
Like, I can't believe. This is horrible. This is disgusting. How could you? I was like, whoa. This to me is exactly where people get stuck in their fucking life. It is emotionally difficult to take ownership of everything in your life, like you said. COVID 19, it's not my fault. But if I retain agency in that and go, okay, what can I do now to make a change, to go in a different direction now, all of a sudden, I remain active. I'm in problem solving mode. I'm not beating myself up over it. In fact, if I were to say the thing that has really allowed me to progress in my life is I can look nakedly at my inadequacies, my failures, my mistakes, without feeling badly about myself. If people could do that, like, if you can understand, oh, it's all my fault. That doesn't make me a bad person. It just means I'm still in control, right? I've got agency in this situation. That would change everything. But most people immediately go to, well, if this is my fault or if I'm in control or if this is my responsibility or whatever, then somehow I'm a bad person.
- [86:43]
Right? And so how do you deal with. When you're. Because I've seen you on stage and not many people have the impetus to be able to say, ask me anything. And you just. You're dealing with their issue, right at that. In that moment, some people feel very vulnerable because they don't know what's coming. You know, I don't ask like before or we had this conversation. And I didn't, I didn't say like, tom, can you feed me the questions? Because there's a certain level of expertise where you go through it and if it's not there, then you're, you're learning something and you'll be able to progress. How do you. But it's hard for somebody who's been, who's, has been identified as victimized. This happened to them, right? Somebody came and they murdered somebody, or they raped or they did something to them. And I'm not saying that, that it's not acknowledging and saying that person is right in any way, but it's again, giving you your power so that you could decide what to focus on. You could decide what things mean. You could decide, you know, how to, how to feel about something. Because what's the alternative? What's that? You're just at the effect of everything. And maybe because I grew up with these kind of challenges and I was isolated and I was kind of marginalized, that I was always searching for what we started with, you know, like some from some monochrome of power, because I felt powerless. I felt extremely limited. But do you believe in then? When, what do people ask you online or on your show? Do you believe in luck then?
- [88:07]
So I do. And I think that acknowledging. So my thing is I want to deal with the messiness of reality. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk in sound bites whenever I can. I'm actually fucking terrible at that. If I had one criticism of me as like a personality, I am God awful at giving short, super succinct answers. But the thing that I'm really good at is existing in the world of nuance. So I'm going to speak in like global, very clear, punctuated language. It's all your fault, right? Even though I know the truth is, no, of course it's not. But what I'm trying to get at is I want people to take the principle away. But without speaking in definitive language, people get mired in nuance. So my thing is let the nuance be the advanced class. So I'm more than willing to say luck is real, 100%. Very easy to look at my life and say, oh yeah, there's. If I hadn't met this person, like my wife.
- [88:59]
Fuck.
- [88:59]
If you boil down to how I ended up meeting my wife because she grew up in England. I met her because a friend of hers happened to give her a brochure for the school that I was teaching at in America. Now if that whoever put that flyer down hadn't put the flyer down, or if the friend hadn't seen it, or if Lisa hadn't been complaining and saying she wanted more technical skills. Any piece of that chain breaks down and I'm either not married or I'm married to somebody else and my life could be radically different. That was luck. I didn't do shit about that. But at the same time, I was prepared. And everything after that, right? All the energy that I put in from the time I was an early teenager into being a high level communicator that could have a good relationship, I literally thought about that. My nightmare at the age of 14 was being in a loveless marriage. So I was constantly researching communication. Like, how do you do this? How do you have a functioning relationship? Like, all of that was really important to me. So I'm putting in, you know, my 10,000 hours around relationships, around communication, around understanding myself, like all of that. So, yes, this moment of luck happens, my wife happens to cross my path. But in that moment, I was prepared to make the most of it. So my thing is, sure, luck exists, yes. Bad fortune exists, yes. Shit is going to happen to you. Yes. COVID 19. Who the fuck would have thought? The number of people, Jim, that are going to go the fuck out of business because of COVID 19 is crazy. Now, as a business owner, I could be thinking about that, like, whoa, like this is going to be a level of disruption or somebody that has money tied up in economic, financial vehicles. What the fuck's going to happen to all that, right? Am I about to go broke? It's like, cool. I could spend my time fretting over that. Or I could say, oh, Jim, one thing I know is if I keep my mind in the right place and I'm looking for the opportunity, then I'll take advantage of the opportunity. So one person sees COVID 19 as lucky. Oh, my God. Can you believe I heard Noah Kagan talking about, hey, boys and girls, right now there's going to be a wealth transfer. The people that understand how to leverage COVID 19 will win and their fucking fortunes will be made. Other people are going to panic. They won't see the opportunities, and this is going to destroy them. Who's lucky, right? Is it really luck or is it yes? Circumstances are random. There's so many things that we can't control. But if you've prepared, right, if you come, as I say, seeking power, right? The ability to close your eyes, imagine a better world, open your eyes, get the skills you need to execute against it. If you have the skill set to deal with something like this, luck becomes irrelevant. It really becomes a question of skill set. The best thing I heard about luck, I forget the guy's name who said this, but he said luck is like a bus and another one is always coming along. But you have to have the fair to be able to get on. And the fair is your skillset.
- [91:50]
I love that because right now with all those businesses that you mentioned that went out of business, it doesn't mean there was bad leadership or that entrepreneur didn't have amazing skill sets. It's just who could have predicted this happening at this time and at the same time taking control and responsibility. Because it's not about truth. It's what we decide in that moment that either is going to empower us to be able to move forward or make us shrink and just curl up.
- [92:18]
What do you mean it's not about truth? Because that is something I think I agree with. Violence.
- [92:23]
Jim Kwik
Yes.
- [92:23]
Tom Bilyeu
So I believe that when we're going back to luck again that it's.
- [92:28]
Jim Kwik
Yes, there's some.
- [92:29]
Tom Bilyeu
These people maybe are unlucky, all these businesses that are going out of business, but it doesn't mean that they weren't. They didn't have great skill set as a leader or as a business individual. But maybe through circumstance who could have predicted what happened? Right. And so is it true that, that I could have an infinite memory? The truth is, I don't know. But I choose to believe that I have that potential. So that way I could, you know, I'll do the things necessary to be able to show up, show up that way. Is it true that, is it absolutely positive that me and my, and my significant other, she and I are going to be together forever? Like I choose to believe that's the truth because I'll work towards it. It's not that, you know, like even having this is a little self promo, but even having Will Smith on the COVID like of promoting the book with his endorsement. I had to work as if he was going to do it. Otherwise I want to operate it as if he would say yes and his team when his lawyers would say yes to that, but it wasn't true. But I operated as if yes, of course he'd want to be able to do that, to support it. Otherwise if I believe that that wasn't a truth, I would never have done the things in the level of intensity and the follow through if it wasn't. So I chose to believe that. And am I disappointed sometimes when things don't work out? Yes. For the moment. But then I always feel like I choose to believe that in some way this is serving me. And that's my choice to believe what happens to be true at that moment.
- [94:02]
Yeah, I'm obsessed with that concept. And the reason I'm obsessed with it is your actions and your behaviors are going to follow what you, you believe. So it's like, yeah, do I know that we're all limited? Of course I know that we're all limited. But the odds of you making a mistake in your life because you believe you're capable of less than you actually are is basically 100%. The odds that you'll make some mistake because you believe you're capable of more than you are are very, very low. So most people stop themselves. They don't overextend. Now, race car drivers might find themselves where they think they can get a gap at 250 miles an hour that they can't. They crash. Okay, fair enough. But for the most part, that's not where people are playing. Most people, they don't even go down the path of getting better at something because they just tell themselves that they can't. So like your book being called Limitless. Okay, I will say it is pretty clear that humans have limitations, but they're so far away from where I feel like I'm at now that I just don't waste any time thinking about where I'm limited. I try to put my time and energy into just, okay, what do I care enough about that I'm going to put in the energy to get better? And I do think that's a fair question. Like, are there things that you want to be good at, but you just acknowledge I'm not willing to work at it to get good.
- [95:18]
And that's the perfect statement because it's really about choice, whether we're going to be dedicated to do that. I feel like at some level, maybe physical things are sometimes difficult for me. And they've been like that since I was a kid. I was never the first one picked to be on a team for something. And so maybe I was imprinted with that kind of inadequacy where I felt like I wasn't physically capable of certain things. Taking people to dance or to be able to do like a martial arts. For some reason I didn't get it like other people get it. And I'm very conscious of like watching other people and thinking in my mind like I did when I was, when I couldn't read. I was like, wow, that person is doing it. So Much better. And I really. And I know stuff and I practice, but the effort isn't getting the same kind of reward as maybe the people around me. But there are definitely areas, I mean there are certainly limits. I mean some people can't bench, they get really, really strong, but eventually they can't bench press a car.
- [96:20]
Jim Kwik
Right.
- [96:20]
Tom Bilyeu
So there's some kind of physical, their physics that are involved. But I agree that most people error on the other side where they err on, you know, less than what they're capable of. You know when you have your interviews with David Goggin and this has been pretty, pretty well established, that there's always another. I believe that limitless is not about being perfect. I believe the idea of limitless is that we could progress and advance beyond what we currently believe is possible in ourselves with the right commitment and dedication and discipline and work ethic.
- [96:55]
To that point, the thing that shocked me the most ever, I'm going to look this up here, is push ups. What do you think the pushup world
- [97:04]
record is for the number of push ups in a minute?
- [97:08]
Consecutive pushups. Yeah. God, I can't believe I was right about this. So the number of push ups without stopping, without getting out of the push up position. So I think he could rest, you know, in that position. But number of consecutive push ups, would you believe 500?
- [97:26]
I would believe more just because of the nature of the conversation. I mean for me to think about doing 500 pushups, how about 5,000?
- [97:32]
Would that be just absurd?
- [97:34]
That would be, yeah.
- [97:36]
To me when I was like, no, literally no one could do more than a thousand push push ups, I wouldn't have believed it. And the fact that it isn't 5,000, it's 10,500 is so startling. It's like so in Limitless you talk about the Roger Bannister effect where it was like everybody believed the four minute mile, but then he ends up breaking the four minute mile. And people didn't think it was humanly possible. And then once he does it, within a year some like just ridiculous number of people end up doing it. I think a year later, three people break the four minute mile in the same race. And this is a record that had stood for all of human history. So it's like, okay, that's crazy. One person shows that it's possible and then all of a sudden hearing that a guy could do 10,500 push ups like that, that's so crazy to me that it really does show you that it's crazy to me. And I would never have been able to do it because I just had a belief that I didn't even think I had a belief. It just seemed so self evidently true that you couldn't do 10,000 push ups. It's just so bizarre.
- [98:39]
And I can map out for people who are watching this in areas of what they feel like is possible to make in income or in their health or can people really have this level of depth in a relationship? I would imagine it shows up in different places. I believe I have a core belief that the most infinite resource on planet earth is human potential. When we're talking about the mind. Because I can't see a limit on people's creativity. I can't see a limit on people's determination. I can't see a set limit on their imagination. And I feel like part of that having to do. When we're talking about the power of the mind, I feel like we, we haven't even begun to explore the possibilities of what people create. Like I remember years ago when we were talking about your comic, right? And then I was like, it was very, very early stages, but there was. You speak with such certainty that you just like. I'm like, it's undeniable. I'm like, yes, this is obviously there's no way I would bet against this guy because of the certainty. And then over time, through just, you know, forced effort and call it, will, call it whatever, that forces of skill development and dedication that you take, that you exert your power.
- [100:00]
Jim Kwik
I suffered and struggled. I had the brain injury when I was 5 years old and I suffered all through elementary school, all through middle school, all through high school. And so it was like a good 14 years. And a lot of it was, you know, this thing where it's. Even as a young age, maybe I was pretending that everything was fine and I'd be struggling. It's kind of like that metaphor of a duck on a pond. And you see it's all calm and relaxed, but underneath it's just hustling really, really fast. And people don't always see what's below the iceberg. But for me, I struggle privately and my parents because I grew up with these challenges and I didn't have a lot of people to talk to because when you have feel like you're broken, you don't connect with a lot of people. So on top of everything, I was also painfully shy. I was introverted, but I was also shy and very reserved and I would always sit in the corner and I honestly, I've never talked about this publicly, But I ask everybody, you know, what their superpower is. And I feel like that my superpower growing up as an insecure kid who felt like he was broken and taught that by adults, adults, that my superpower was being invisible. Like, I didn't want to be seen. I mean, I ultimately did want to be seen, and I want to be heard like most of us, and accepted and acknowledged, but I didn't want the spotlight like I would do. For example, my parents instilled, like this work ethic about working, working hard. And so I would do a book report. And even though it's more difficult for me and to the point where I'd be like, okay, I have, I was done. But if a teacher asked me in high school to present it in front of a class, I would actually lie and say I didn't do it. And I would take a zero because I was so terrified of being in front of a group of people, and I would throw it out on the way out of class. And it was really scary. But my parents always held that there was more, that there was purpose, that there's a reason that I was going through these challenges. I mean, my mother actually went into, became a special ed teacher because she just really wanted to help. Because nobody knew.
- [102:02]
Lisa Bilyeu
Because of what you went through, because
- [102:03]
Jim Kwik
of what I went through. And so because they were very caring like that. But the challenge is we don't know what we don't know. And they did the best they could to be able to help me. But what they did instill in me was that there was a reason that through going through struggles, just like when they came to this country, all of us go through struggles right in our health or relationship, whatever it is. But through struggles come strengths. And people don't talk about this as much. And I probably have a post traumatic stress from it. Going through brain injury after brain injury. There's also post traumatic growth, which, you know, it's not as widely talked about, but there's some people that go through immense amount of trauma and difficulty and challenge, but they come out of it actually more empowered that they. When they say to themselves that because of going through this, I found a new strength, I found my superpowers, I found a new meaning in my life. I found a new level of commitment. I found a strength, a mission, if you will. And they wouldn't, a lot of them attest that they wouldn't trade that experience, no matter how painful it was at the time, for anything. And I find that growing up with reading challenges and I couldn't read for an extra three years. I pretended how to read. You know, it's like the imposter syndrome. It's like they have this image of how they want to be projected to the world and then they have this image of what they fear they are and then they have their real, who they are. But I think a lot of people are suffering and overloaded and overwhelmed and they're depleted because they're trying to hold these images in place, you know, and then be themselves also as well, in different contexts. That's why I love you, because you are the same on camera and off. And there's a congruency, there's an authenticity that's there. And I feel like a lot of people expend unnecessary amounts of energy trying to hold up this image of their ideal self to the world. And they have this image that they fear it's going to be revealed to somebody else. And so growing up as a kid who couldn't read, I would pretend I understood things. Like teachers would explain things and I didn't want to be the only one who didn't understand. And I would pretend. But in private I was really suffering and struggling. And so, you know, it's one of those things where you wonder why, like my two biggest challenges growing up were learning and public speaking, which is the universe has a weird sense of humor. Because that's what I do for my mission now. And so it's interesting how things work.
- [104:25]
Lisa Bilyeu
How did you push through that? Because so as somebody who's seen you speak publicly, you're so good at it. Like you have so much energy and enthusiasm and projected confidence. Even if you're secretly overcoming something. How do you go through the dark time of feeling like you've been identified as the kid with the broken brain, really struggling truly, how do you get your self talk going in a positive direction? Everything would be pushing back against you, I think.
- [104:56]
Jim Kwik
So it's even. I even get nervous with doing things like this. And you know that, you know, even being on camera or having my picture taken or there's still this residual. I always get butterflies, incredible amounts of butterflies before I go on stage. Every single time. How I get through it. I mean, we talked about, we've talked about previously about mindset and about the importance of having a growth mindset. And I always talk about the second second G for me is, is grit.
- [105:22]
Lisa Bilyeu
And These are the three GS of the superhero, right?
- [105:25]
Jim Kwik
Yeah, and I think so. I think having a powerful mindset, being unstoppable or Just having the ability to go and, and succeed, whatever success is for you, you have, you have to always, you have to be growing because if you're not growing, then you're just, you're backsliding, right? But you also need a level of grit. And I think grit, just like growth is a muscle. It's something that you need to sharpen, sharpen through challenge. Because through the challenge you get all the change that comes from it. I would say that if I'm effective, having an impact on stage, and we all have a stage of our life, whether it's on a physical stage or just going through our day, that I challenge my grit and my ability to persist. I feel like that the most successful people on the planet that having the level of impact that they want to have to go through challenges and they. That's a mad, you know, just like the hero's journey that we've talked about many times. And, and so how I get myself through it, I monitor my self talk because I think that's important. I feel like with a name like Quick, you know, you have to be a runner, right? And so I had to be a runner back in school and to be careful getting speeding tickets and everything else like that. But I was. Remember I was reading a book years ago on preparing for a marathon and one of the chapters again was on the psychology of it. And it said this verbatim, you know, because I'm the memory expert. It said your, your. Your brain is like a supercomputer and your self talk is a program that will run. So if you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. And I always tell people that. And, and now I, I don't, I don't think the brain is like a supercomputer. It's. I think it's a, it's a weak metaphor for, for, for what it is because you know, this is like a living computer that could do so much more and has different capabilities. But I would say that your self talk is important and it is the program that we will run. And I always tell people to keep it positive, keep it empowering because your mind is always eavesdropping on your self talk, right? And you have to be careful what you say to yourself because it's this unconscious command. So I would be very careful. Like when I'm get. When I get nervous or I feel like I'm. I think some of the most successful People live at the edge of their limits, you know, and they. And they play there also as well. And so whenever I feel in my nervous system, I feel like I can't do it, then I feel like I really must do it, because I feel like how we do anything is how we do everything.
- [107:45]
Lisa Bilyeu
When did you have that realization that you could overcome some of the fears by knowing what your motives were?
- [107:53]
Jim Kwik
You've had many guests address this, and I really do feel. And congratulations with Mel and Simon. Those videos are like, you know, hundreds of millions of people watch it. And I feel like I was having this conversation. I did a talk in Silicon Valley, and afterwards, Bill Gates comes up to me, and I asked him what superpower he could read. 1. And he's like, the ability to read faster. And I was like, oh, I could totally help with that. And I believe in reading. And I know you're an avid, avid reader, and we share that commonality, leaders or readers, but we're talking about the future education. And I was taking the approach from adult learning theory and brain science, and he was approaching it from more technology and scale. And somebody who was listening asked the question, saying, is there anything missing? You know, what's missing absent theory and technology? And we were talking about it, and we came to the conclusion is understanding human motivation. Like, because motive matters, right? And what drives us. I always tell people that there's a success formula I subscribe to, and I call it H cubed, that it goes from your head to your heart to your hands, especially in the personal development space, or what they teach about goal setting. You could affirm things in your head or think things in your head or visualize things in your head, but if you're not acting with your hands, there's something that's missing. There's an incongruency there. And what I tell people is, check in with the second H, which is your heart, which is the symbol of emotion, the. The energy of motion. And so I feel like that's the fuel that fuels the car that gets you to take action for something. And I do believe what got me through it is figuring out what my why was, right? I don't want people to suffer the way I did if I could do anything about it. For me, it's like no brain left behind, right? Because I live with that identity for so long. And my message to people, whether it's on stage or on the podcast or anything, is that we are more than what we're demonstrating, that we've been sold this lie, that people are Taught through school. When I do these demos and I on stage memorize 100 names and words and numbers forwards and backwards, and it appears effortlessly, I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you. I do this to express to you what's really possible. Because the truth is, everyone can do this too. And so much more applied towards creativity and focus and flow and problem solving and thinking and really overcoming the biggest challenges of their life and maybe even the world. The challenge is we were taught a lie. We were taught a lie that somehow our intelligence, our potential, our learning, our memory somehow is fixed, our creativity is fixed, our thinking is fixed, like our shoe size. And what we've discovered, as you know more about brain science in the past two decades, we've discovered more than the previous 2,000 years. And what we know is that we're to going grossly underestimating our own capacity to be able to grow, to be able to contribute, to improve our intelligence and our influence and our impact. And I'm really, I want to kind of pull the veil behind and just say, hey, this is about transcending, you know, this is about ending the trance. Ending the trance that you're. That we're not good enough, you know, that we're not smart enough, that we're not this genius and telling the truth. And the truth is people, people, we're faster and we're smarter than we think. And not just to be able to rote memorize things, but be able to really solve significant challenges. And maybe that these challenges that we're going through are the lessons that we need to learn the most. And then some people who learn those lessons feel compelled to be able to share that voice with other people. So it's not just one candle. We just can set things ablaze.
- [111:16]
Lisa Bilyeu
So what are some of the key, key problems that you personally want to solve that you think we face as a society? Like, what are those major movements for you?
- [111:25]
Jim Kwik
So a lot of these conversations you and I, we've had with our mutual friend Peter Diamandis over at xprize, I was at the very early stages of their Education Literacy Prize when they first launched it. And so I think for me, my platform is education. And I feel like that growing up, if anyone who's watching this feels like they're overloaded, overwhelmed, and they can't keep up, I always tell people that I don't think it's completely their fault. It's just we all grew up with a 20th century education that prepared us for a 20th century world, which at the Turn of the century was working in factories and farms and assembly line. And our education system was mirrored to that. It was assembly line, one size fits all, cookie cutter approach towards education. Teaching us things about what to learn. Math, history, science, Spanish. But all things we could find online nowadays, right? So what do you need to be able to regurgitate that information for? But it wasn't, it was about what to learn, but not how to learn. And you know, how to think for yourself, how to solve problems, how to be creative. All the things that you can't outsource to, you know, to intelligent, like automated or technology or you can't outsource to Asia. You know, our value in this world is really our building, our creativity, right? Because that's not something that's easily outsourced. Our ability to create value, be creators, take our vision and turn them into reality, take the invisible and make it visible. But where are the classes on that? Right? On how to be able to live your best version of yourself. That's why I love this and the conversations that we have and the conversations that you're bringing out to the world. Because nowadays we live in this. See, here's the thing I get to work you mentioned with SpaceX and Elon and such and rocket scientists and all these. I mean, think about that. We're living in a world of autonomous electric cars and spaceships that are going to Mars. Our vehicle choice when it comes to learning, it's like we're choosing like a horse and buggy, right? That's our choice. And that we wonder why. Wow, this is taking so long. This is so hard, this is so difficult. But it's not our fault. We just weren't prepared for this world that we're living in right now. They say that, that if Rip Van Winkle, the gentleman who slept for decades of slumber, right? If he woke up today, the only thing he would recognize is our schools. And that's not a slight against teachers. Like, my mother's a school teacher, my aunt is a college professor. I love those individuals because they're some of the most hardworking individuals that I know and I get to train a lot of them. But it's a systemic issue. Just like many challenges, it doesn't grow and it has, hasn't evolved as much as the rest of the world has. But I love this because right now, classrooms, they don't have four walls. I mean, how many people are watching this from how many different countries right now? And you never know who's listening on the other side. And that motivates, inspires the heck out of me. Because what if someone right now is watching this on their smart device and they're in the middle of a third world country and they become the next Malala or Elon Musk or what have you? And that's what really juices me. And so education, I feel like a lot of people feel like that when they graduate school, their learning is done. In fact, the two big dips in cognitive performance is usually when people graduate school, and the second one is when they retire from work. So often when people retire, their mind, they feel like their body is not too far behind either because of that connection.