WATCH THIS To Unleash Your Super Brain & LEARN FASTER | Jim Kwik

what's up everybody welcome to another episode of conversations with tom i'm here with somebody that is truly truly a good friend of mine i think he's an extraordinary human being he is a memory expert a learning expert dare i say a brain expert the one and only jim quick what's up dude i'm great ben thanks for having me yeah it's good to see you being here you too man i am super sad there there are many things that work in my favor with the lockdown that everybody's under so we're recording this during the covid19 crisis uh and being locked down actually has some advantages like we were talking about before as an introvert like there is a part of this that's actually extraordinary uh it's nice to have you know a lot of space but man one thing i've got to say is you make frequent trips to la and sometimes we actually get to connect and spend time together so i'm super bummed uh that won't be happening until the travel ban is lifted so yeah well i appreciate you uh and everyone who's watching this right now and listening to this conversation you and i have spent a good amount of time together um just one-on-one and there's so many times i wish i was recording the conversations that we've had and so this is uh it's it's it's it's it was due so thank you yeah man absolutely i think this would be a lot of fun so one thing i don't want to rat out uh what your name is on skype but i actually am sorry it's like a combination of some of my favorite things um so the obviously the first two parts i i understand very well um but the number does the number mean something yeah um there are uh 24 hours in a day and seven days a week you know so there you go yeah i love it the reference is there i've had that uh username on skype since skype was created so i mean i've been using it forever it's been kind of my my identity i'm a fan of yours also as well yeah that's something that's uh it is has been a big part of my life so the notion of i talk a lot about power so in my skype name is is the word power and that's something that's really weird for a lot of people it's a word that i think makes some people deeply uncomfortable but for me i am i think it all comes down to how you define it so for me power is the ability to close your eyes imagine a better world open your eyes and then make that world come true and it's like i've said that so many times maybe it sounds a little too slick but the the ability to actually make real i try to avoid the word manifest because that word has become very tainted but the ability to bring into physical existence something that nobody else has brought into existence yet like that that is power and it is something that anybody can do but it's all about skill set and i find that that's like i don't know if you struggle with this as somebody who speaks a lot but one thing that really freaks me out is how quickly ultra powerful concepts feel trite it's like they get repeated because they're true they rhyme because people want to find a way to like make it more memorable or it's an alliteration right so in your book limitless by the way everybody run out and get that bad boy it's [ __ ] incredible we will certainly talk about that today but you use that a lot right so you use um acronyms you use alliteration you use all kinds of things to make things more memorable but the problem with that is through that repetition people begin to sort of tune out the real power behind it and skill set having like it has utility it's it is meant to be like this it lets you do things like i i [ __ ] 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 right so architecture becomes the most obvious example you can build a [ __ ] house you can build a building you 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 um but i'm 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 it's that that is very powerful and i know in a world full of uh short form social media and sound bites people you know sometimes who are trained even even as you know writers or bloggers or putting people putting out content and we have stuff rehearsed one of the reasons why i can appreciate this show is just you you throw people off tilt and they have to go raw and it becomes real um i definitely am guilty of using alliteration and mnemonic devices to simplify concepts so their people could 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 their being into their nervous system you know through repetition but people don't want to hear that they they get they they get think i know that already you know they'll they get bored of the fundamentals they want the next thing that's super sexy like tom really seriously really what what did it take to build that company or build that 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 and everything else they don't see that below that proverbial meme iceberg of habits and skill development and everything else and and so it's it's for me it's always kind of you know treading that line but i'm glad in this conversation and i apologize for the happening in the middle of manhattan who has his time we're having this conversation it's an opportunity to have even more focus and and uh well we're training under real conditions for sure 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 [ __ ] around you uh so the 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 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 [ __ ] 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's never done it before so it's like moving up and down and then i've got people like walking around because something like went out and i'm like i'm gonna keep doing this [ __ ] like nothing is happening around me and it's such a powerful moment if you flip because most people are like [ __ ] this is performance because we do them live so there's people here watching live i've only got one shot we don't edit this [ __ ] so like [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] 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 um so like you said performing into real-world conditions and not looking at it is like oh this is my one chance to do something it's really powerful yeah even even writing or having this conversation before right before we got on i was like you know i was i'm i i was saying to your your team like i don't use skype this is not something that's new it's i you know i always uh 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 do really well in some areas and in some areas i have not developed that skill set but um 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 um well so i on this thing in particular the ability to stay focused and to let go i am 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 um so growing up in the 80s video games are frowned upon parents are like you're going to 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 destiny 2. i [ __ ] love it man it is so much fun i have a ton of fun with lisa and 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 tea bag my body and that is so frustrating and it's so obnoxious and it [ __ ] 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 and 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 [ __ ] thing you need to practice so video games are a rad way of you you have this completely false sense that there's actually something that matters here that there are real stakes and i'm you know i'm trying to win i'm trying to avoid that 14 year old you know 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 this detention or to tenses 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 three thousand four thousand people and it's like ah relax expand it's uh it's that's interesting because i was gonna 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 and it does it shows up everywhere do you um 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 it just happens for certain things completely when i go on stage i get butterflies and 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 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 i can't feel fear and focus on 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 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 like a video game in my mind like this little mental rehearsal as if that i would see myself performing from their point of view and i don't know what it does but it it paints uh an environment for me to when i'm on stage to be able to see it from their perspective and hopefully be a better teacher because of it um see from different points of view but i i am nervous right before i go on to the point where sometimes i want to throw up and this could be this could be even and these are just triggers and i know this is something i'm personally working on but it 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 paid 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 that i'm gonna say 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 i want to level up so but it is much like a video game i i grew up playing video games as a kid um i i had a lot of escapism you know because i i felt like i was deficient in so many ways um 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 and but i grew up playing video games and right after high school taking the bus to nathan's hot dogs and putting in you know quarters upon quarters growing up on like atari and coleco vision 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 like attributes like this is your strength on you know 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 gaining 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 seeking treasure um to be able to have that power in that imaginary setting in that world um but it's it's it's interesting that if i can map that out and turn the world into a game and occasionally i'll 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 something like do something that's difficult for myself and i force myself and i don't back down you know i built my career on that it wasn't always easy when i got started because there was no internet i would 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 i but it was just same the same methodology and mindset it was just how do i serve this person here this person here and it's just i want to go back so you said um that you were sitting in uh the theater or whatever at one point in the speaker said something that changed your life what was that who was it what they said so it's interesting because there's this there's this this is asian dude i honestly don't even know who the speaker was um but i was there and for some reason i just 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 years ago and i was just this you know this punk kid that didn't know anything for anything but i would um 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 uh 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 can identify with something that they're saying and know that on that cause i think that that's a fundamental like core belief that i have that i created my whole life that that meant that through the choices or some some some way i am responsible and that that was the message is that i'm at 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 well i think having these global ideas um or these i i talk about in the book like seven lies and it's basically these these false beliefs these ideas lie again it's an acronym it's an easy thing to remember you gotta give people the acronym man come on i do because it's because sometimes i only have you know five minutes with somebody um or something but a lie they really do work so my beef with stuff like that is only that it's so facile that that people then begin to discount it's [ __ ] 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 uh that it it looks for those patterns and when there's a pattern it it retains the information so i'm trust me i'm not denigrating i'll [ __ ] use an acronym wherever i get one yeah and so anyway lie is an acronym you use in the book what does it stand for yeah 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 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 memetic kind of like this virus of of the mind if you will and it goes goes on and on and on but um 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 it in an early episode of impact theory or or inside west 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 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 dude now now you're into a zone i'm so passionate about this and it is i can't fathom that this is a calm um i keep wanting to say conversational that is not the word controversial wow it's it's a controversial idea i can't fathom that that's true but when i first started like becoming uh i'm gonna start putting my ideas out of 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 your 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 punch line was you decided to get in the car because i paint this whole picture of you stop at a stop light 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 and 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 [ __ ] out people wrote in you're victim blaming what the [ __ ] like i can't believe this is horrible this is disgusting how could you i was like whoa the this to me is exactly where people get stuck in their [ __ ] life it is emotionally difficult to take ownership of everything in your life like you said covid19 is 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 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 um 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 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 in that moment it you know some people feel very vulnerable because they don't know what's coming you know i don't ask like before we had this conversation and i didn't say like tom can you feed me the questions 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 has been identified as victimized this happened to them right somebody came and they they murdered somebody or they where 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 can 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 it 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 for some monogram 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 so i i do and i think that acknowledging so my thing is i 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 [ __ ] terrible at that 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 um 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 in my life and say oh yeah there's if i hadn't met this person like my wife [ __ ] if you boil down to how i ended up meeting my wife 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 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 do [ __ ] 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 yeah sure luck exists yes bad fortune exists yes [ __ ] is going to happen to you yes kova 19 who the [ __ ] would have thought the number of people jim that are going to go the [ __ ] out of business because of kova 19 is crazy now i 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 [ __ ] is going to happen to all that right am i about to go broke it's like cool i could spend my time threading 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 covet 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 covet 19 will win and their [ __ ] 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 redlock 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 um 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 skill set i love that because right now with all those businesses that you mentioned that went out of business it doesn't matter doesn't mean there was bad leadership or that that entrepreneur didn't have you know amazing skill sets it's just who could have predicted this happening at this at this time and at the same time taking you know control and responsibility because it's not about truth it's what we decide in that moment that either it's going to empower us to be able to move forward or make us shrink and just kind of curl up and what do you mean it's not about truth because that that is something i think i agree with violently yes so i believe that when we're going back to luck again that it's yes there's some these people maybe that 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 you know through circumstance who could have predicted what 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 um 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 cover 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 he would say yes and his team wins 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 if it wasn't so i chose to believe that and am i disappointed sometimes when those 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 you know and that's my choice to believe what happens to be true at that moment yeah i'm obsessed with that that concept and the reason i'm obsessed with it is your actions and your behaviors are going to follow what you believe and 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 a hundred percent 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 you know 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 um so like your book being called limitless okay i 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 and that and that's that's the perfect statement because it's really about about choice you know whether we're going to be dedicated to do that um 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 the you know that kind of inadequacy where i felt like i wasn't physically capable of certain things um you know taking uh 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 right so there's some kind of physical their physics that that are involved but i agree that most people error on the other side where they they are on you know less than what they're capable of you know when you have your 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 our self with the right commitment and dedication and discipline and work ethic to to that point the thing that um shocked me the most ever i'm going to look this up here um is push-ups what do you think the push-up world record is for the number of push-ups 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 in that position but uh number of consecutive push-ups would you believe 500 i would i would believe more just because of the nature of the conversation i mean uh for me to think about doing 500 push-ups how about 5 000 would that be just absurd that would be that yeah uh to me when i was like no literally no one could do more than a thousand push-ups i wouldn't have believed it and the fact that it isn't five thousand it's ten thousand five hundred is so startling uh 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 form in a mile and and people didn't think it was humanly possible and then once he does it within a year some un 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 i didn't even think i had a belief it just seemed so self-evidently true that you couldn't do ten thousand push-ups and it's just so bad and i can map out for people who are watching this and in areas of what they feel like is possible to make in turn you know in income or in their health or can people really have this level of depth in a relationship i would imagine that it shows up in different places you know i believe i have a core belief that the the most infinite resource like on planet earth is is human potential you know 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 on their imagination and i feel like part of that i mean having to do when we're talking about the power of the mind i feel like we haven't even begun to explore the possibilities of what people create like i remember you know years ago when you were talking about about your your comic right and then i was like it was very very early stages and but there was you speak with such certainty that you just like i'm like it's undeniable i'm like yes this is this is obviously there's no way i would bet against this guy because of the certainty and then you know over time through just the you know forced effort and and call it will call it whatever that of course is of skill development and dedication that it you take that you exert your power and you take what you had in your mind that is invisible to other people and you make it tangibly visible i have a whole shelf of your books right as physical evidence and proof but that's how the world like that that's how we dent the universe right for sure dude sheer force of will i will say that that is the thing and i want to talk about the comic industry and i'm probably never going to get a chance with anybody other than you uh so for anybody listening if you don't give a [ __ ] about the comic industry trust me there is a lesson here that is so powerful it it is agnostic to what the industry is this is talking about disruption so i don't know how much you know about the direct market so people go by obviously you know where people buy comic books but uh the direct market is like this whole thing that came up because uh basically the industry was having a hard time making enough money off of newsstands so in like the 70s i think people started building comic shops where you could go and just buy comic books now over time it's become really a terrible business but um in the 90s it consolidated down to one distributor a company called diamond distribution so you have all the whatever 2500 comic book shops in america are being serviced by one company anytime there was a monopoly there's going to be terrible customer service and so it just becomes a very dysfunctional system and recently they they made an announcement it's it's they're not out of business but they're basically saying we're not going to distribute comics anymore now there's only one distributor when you're one distributor because of covet 19 when you're one distributor says we don't distribute comic books anymore you can imagine what's going to happen to the marketplace it's essentially going to cease to exist so it'll be interesting i don't know how many stores will go out of business but it's going to be a lot and if covet 19 goes on for call it two months man i just cannot see the direct market existing beyond that so now you can imagine the amount of panic in the industry from creators from store owners from people who as an art form wanted to exist and all that if you though so the way i'm looking at it is we just invested all this infrastructure to make sure that we could sell into the direct market and this happened it's like okay cool this is so much disruption whenever there's this level of disruption there's huge opportunity in there somewhere so where is it and so we're going to change everything about the way that we're distributing the comics the way that we're making the comics and i really believe that this is going to kill about 80 of the indie publishers out there but it isn't going to kill us now it's not going to kill us for a couple reasons one we obviously have the resources to keep funding it even if we're losing money i won't overlook that but the other is that it is what it is right like deal with the facts the fact is diamond is going to stop distributing comics okay so like that that is a fact either i go by diamond and i try to like take up their mantle but it's a bad business for a reason so i don't see that as the wise move so then it's like okay well if the world is this way and my mindset is such that i'm looking for the opportunity and i have what you're talking about which is certainty now one question why do i have certainty two reasons one i'm limitless i really believe that so i have the ability to learn anything that i need to learn so cool this is gonna get shaken up i just spent all this time learning about diamond [ __ ] it it's out the window i'm not gonna waste a second mourning that lamenting it it's like that's not how you create momentum so set that aside i know that i can learn this new thing and at since i know that i can learn this new thing and i know get ready everybody this is one of the few things that i can say in a sound bite certainty is intoxicating now i wish i'd thought of that i don't remember where i heard it but it's [ __ ] brilliant certainty is intoxicating and i was like ooh i don't always feel certain but i can always act with certainty and once i develop the discipline to be like it is better to go 100 [ __ ] miles an hour in the wrong direction than it is to be uncertain [Music] anybody listening let that [ __ ] sink in you are better off running 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction than you are standing still why because when you're moving you're encountering information even mistakes are incredibly powerful because they're so rich in information standing still doesn't teach you [ __ ] you're not gonna think your way to this so anyway i hear this uh certainty is intoxicating it's intoxicating to the people around you how do i create momentum by developing certainty by knowing i'm better off even if i'm not sure i'm better off running figuring it out and then when we hit a roadblock or we crash and burn i just hey cool i know i can learn over here guys we're now going in this direction and moving with certainty you get people behind you you galvanize people and you can move but it's like normally in times of disruption people let their emotions [ __ ] spiral and they never you know going back to what we're talking about at the beginning of this they're not able to get their mind re-centered in the midst of chaos which is like when you can be calm in chaos you want to talk about getting a group of people to follow you be calm when everybody else is freaking out dude people are drawn to that [ __ ] and that that's a huge element to leadership when you're saying this i it for me there it comes down to a choice because there's a quote in the book i quote a friend a quota a french philosopher and this is a quotable so i don't have to pre-frame it every single time that we talk about um these easy to remember things but it said um life is the c between the b and the d and some people watching are listening think i'm talking in tongues or code b stands for birth and d stands for the other side right death so c life stands for choice and i think certainty comes down to a choice you know i'm in the midst of this like everybody else you know my business is affected however it's affected my normal day-to-day business but as you know i'm launching this book and i had you know dinner with you just a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about this book and my main platform was my my wheelhouse which is speaking and just like when this started happening in the environment right coven 19 this one conference got cancelled and then the next day another cam one canceled and then another one and then three in one day all of a sudden in a matter of 10 days 20 of my speaking engagements were cancelled and they were all platforms for my book and i have no control over that like i have no control i can ruminate about thinking about all the effort i put into setting those up and all the team hours to be able to to put together those those speaking events and having books and everything all these things available and all of a sudden a matter of a week and a half it's just it's just gone right and then so but going to your team where they're very uncertain they put a lot of effort and energy and sacrifice into creating that where we you know because we're on a mission right we want to build better brighter brains we want to leave no brain left behind and so it was a disappointment but coming from a place of certainty and even even you know we talked people suggesting why don't you just push it off to the fall and launch it then when this is when this is over and i'm like no people need this book now this book is not just a book on speed reading and remembering names this is a book about giving people helping them manage their mind to be able to optimize their focus and their productivity when they work from home to be able to be there with certainty for for their kids in a world now where industries and businesses are going to business it's a book about adaptation right and skill development and i'm like you know when people have this book it's it's it's permission for them to a reminder that they they they are in control it's it's when you get this book it's like here here's your power power back and even though i'll take a hit for you know coming out now rather than maybe later but maybe not you know maybe now this is forcing you know right now we're having this call virtually i don't have to get on on an airplane and there are other means when you're put in a position where you have to perform when you when when you know what the stakes are for do for for doing this so that's interesting so i want to know how you hold on to the stakes this is something i get asked a lot and honestly people should ask me about it more how in success like you you've dude you've been doing this for a long time man and you go hard how do you stay energized and enthusiastic how do you stay connected to your mission over decades yeah so i it comes down to integration for me and that that's kind of a loaded word so let me let me kind of break that down you know in the in the book i talk about a framework for not only accelerated learning but for accessing more of our our human potential to turn that potential into into power through through action right in terms of what holds us back and part of that book and that framework these three m's uh mindset and motivation and methods you know in in motivation it's interesting because i've had this conversation with you and motivation is a very loaded word right but i feel like i'm motivated every single day of my life because i want my my identity is that when i encounter somebody i want their brain to be better off in some form and i'm agnostic if it's in a podcast and a video and a book and in however it happens i just want to leave that person better off their brain than when when if we didn't connect and that came through a lot of trials it came through a lot of suffering a lot of struggling because every single day you know i was minimized i would shrink i mean my superpower growing up was making myself small right i would sit behind the big kid in class so i don't want to be called on i never want the spotlight because when you feel like you're damaged good you feel like you're broken you don't you don't want the microphone right and so part of that is probably still in me at some deep unconscious level in terms of the butterflies and everything else but i know why i'm doing this because this is it's not certainly money money it plays a role but if it was just about making a dollar that would be a lot different than making a difference because that at a certain point is not as motivating for me here's here's an example i'm not public about this i meant maybe mentioned it just briefly on one of your shows but i have very my kryptonite is my sleep and you you know this as a close personal friend that you know for the past 10 years the first five of those years no exaggeration i was sleeping 90 minutes to two hours a night and and not even um like solid it was interrupted i was waking up nine to 14 times a night now even talking about it it's hard because i know i don't want to be reinforcing that kind of reality and getting pride or some kind of secondary gain by oh give jim some sympathy and let them feel connected or or whatever it is that sometimes people go to talk therapy and they're there for years but but they don't change right because they they're getting some of their needs met from from something right and so for me it was the reality because i had obstructive sleep apnea and i didn't i went undiagnosed and five years ago you know in la ucla i went through a very painful surgery and it jumped from 90 minutes to two hours to four hours i couldn't breathe they took out my uvula my soft palate you know my tonsils so more oxygen could flow in i didn't even realize it because then i had my parents tested my siblings tested they all have the severe apnea i would stop breathing 214 times a night and this is hard when someone's on them on a mission and they in there then they 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 i'm become very very sensitive to things sensitive to light sensitive sirens or sounds sensitive to negative you know people are around me because you know i don't have layers of protection or resilience because of lack of energy a long story but just kind of paint a picture you know for motivation i i never 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 it's who i it's who i am and i feel like there's a formula because a lot of people they're like around motivation getting myself to do this every single day for 28 years and call it motivation called drive you know and it's it's a little bit semantics but it's true like motivation most people is a loaded word right it's getting really excited in the moment you go to a seminar you dance and you're like i'm gonna make all these changes these resolutions the next day we know nothing nothing changes and so i think 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 um bradley cooper robert de niro goes from zero to hero by taking a pill all of a sudden his incredible focus he wrote his book in a few days he had this identic memory right and he he became and he had a surge of motivation but after that pill wore off you know 24 hours later he just went back to you know baseline right and i feel like there's a three-part formula for motivation and i'm curious if you agree with with this right 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 in evidence somebody's motivated is they're doing something to get progress towards that goal right if they're not doing it they're not motivated so we can that's that's obvious physical up you could observe that right you know like objectively now one of the lies that i i feel like i learned also from from you is that you have to enjoy that thing that you're motivated to do like i know because i follow you on instagram very closely that you're you know you're working out and you get up early and you do it but i asked you one time do you enjoy it and 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 you know so nobody could question your 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 like every morning i take cold showers i take ice baths every freaking morning right without fail i i never ever miss it right i'll go cold and i'll go warm and cold and warm i'll go people watch me on instagram i'll do five minutes in 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 d i do it because i have a reason so the p in this formula is purpose like i believe that like and it's not just intellectual reason for for doing something it's feeling it in in your in 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 i went i want to in fact positively impact one billion brains right no brain left behind so i'm very very clear so the mo my motive my reason is there and it's not just intellectual and it's not it's not just pleasurable i i feel like the pain of who 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 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 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 and 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 person 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 be so tuned in to their reason and know why it's important to to work out every day or to 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 it's confusing right and so a confused mind doesn't do anything so s3 stands for a small simple step you know i realize that somebody's not motivated they can have the reason that the energy but if they can't break it down into something actionable because this is a big model a perfect relationship i want to have i want to meet my soul mate and just live happily ever after right i want to have the perfect body i want to build this this million dollar company then that can 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 make 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 pandemic it's not just a physical pandemic and people have their physical hygiene wash your hands and social distancing people have no known strategies for mental hygiene right and this chronic fear is like it it spreads havoc on our immune system right this whole area of psycho neuro immunology how our thoughts could affect our body you know 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 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 uh working with clients but also myself you know when i have no sleep it doesn't matter what you eat right it doesn't matter if you're working out or not like that's like the master energy control center so for me i would always lean in to my practices because it forced me to double down i think there's a gift i don't know if it's true enough 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 to 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 for for a living right what was the advantage that came out of this sleep deprivation experiment for 10 years now much better is i could tell you two things immediately it forced me to double down on everything i teach because i'm just i'm just documenting and telling people what i do right 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 no one nowhere i'd rather be no one i'd rather be talking to right now because as we've heard like like i'm so clear because when you have a finite amount of energy and wherewithal you know and when vitality or bandwidth you don't say yes to a lot of things right and so for me i just focus on the things that i feel like this i'm completely here and wherever i am i'm completely there 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 they're 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 i'm not sure why they're doing this so they're 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 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 [ __ ] excited and so i get out of bed like people often will ask me you know how i'm able because i sleep probably on an average six hours a night roughly and i 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 like those 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 [ __ ] 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 the to keep us alive things that are calorically dense like the 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 um so i 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 [ __ ] excited to make something come true that you're gonna push through whatever you have to push through to make it real i i agree you know and then that's part of it because once you have the motivation you need to know you need the right mindset because somebody could be incredibly motivated and they can even have the methods to be able to know what to do but i think that they're gonna when i talk about mindset for me functionally it's this set of assumptions and attitudes we have about something right with what 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 of what they think they're worth financially or that or maybe they'll sell even self-sabotage potentially go 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 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 so 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 um 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 know what to do 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 a mindset motivation and methods it's kind of this is it's a venn diagram right three intersecting circles we have and you need all three because what i what i wanted to do here and then i'm gonna say answer your question is the book initially was all methodology and i wrote it you know 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 and then when i when i read it i felt like this is a great self-help manual you know this is a great textbook on learning how to learn and our people can 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 their mind people that speak on mindset there's a great book i highly recommend called mindset right there are people that 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 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 everything we know that ideas are are free and they're out there and that i mean really hardly anything what what could 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 an area of of implementation but the goal is you're still stuck in that box like i say this box because people feel like now they're in a box they're in a cocoon they're in a cage right and this cage is 3d it's three-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 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 repetition so vocal you know all those things that we learned all those methods doesn't have to be upgraded but people again you need all 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 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 or billboard advertise or whatever they're using they're not they're not current methods and so where all three of them combined is that fourth i which is integration that i talked about in the beginning integration is just like you're fully aligned and that that for me is a limitless state and what this model allows you to do it allows you to to have an explanatory schema of where you're where you're we 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 can say okay where 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 where of constraint so you can 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 or their lens that they're looking through that makes this possible or you could dissect their motivation how how let's list the reasons that get them out of bed doing these things or how are they framing it in a way that that that taps into a pain or a pleasure or what are they doing to optimize their energy so they just will not will not stop or what are the small simple steps that they're taking or methodology you know what are they doing for marketing for leadership for negotiation for building you know a mass mass movement right and so it becomes a role modeling tool also also well to dissect and look at the world uh a blueprint if you will 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 when you're talking it triggered in my head um about bruce lee man you want to talk about somebody so when i was a kid i was [ __ ] obsessed with bruce lee i read the dow of g kundo i was obsessed with dragon the bruce lee story um that that to me is super powerful i was really excited to see him in the book and the story that you tell about him um 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 uh 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 and what was the outcome of that fight so so bruce um and i is wonderful because we had his daughter shannon lee speak at one of our our conferences recently on his her father's approach towards mastery and learning and how he had the you know all the books and he was always you know always everything was deep deep practice deep work but um you know culturally when he came here he um he was not a hundred percent asian so there was some biases with with you know the asian culture is he a mixed race uh a guy a small part yes on one on one on one of his parents side and so so so being accepted there teaching in uh 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 you know in in our in our in our culture and our community and he was like screw that i'll teach anybody who wants to learn right and and there they they gave him an ultimatum basically saying well if you want to if you do that then then you know then there has to be that they they challenged him to a battle where they bring in a martial artist deep in in in kung fu to be able to fight him and the basically the stakes were that if bruce uh won he could teach whoever he wanted but if he lost 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 end up winning it took him about three minutes to get the guy to give up and uh but he realized out of that that his current techniques and methodology wasn't enough at that fight three minutes is a long time to to be to be added as you know he thought in every bone in his body selling 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 kundo which was an integration of the things that worked it's kind of the approach where he's not emotionally attached to 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 and trophies but like real results on on the street and he built it from there 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 the early days of the ufc like ufc one if you get a chance watch that [ __ ] 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 um 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 a mortal combat 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 time just chasing him around the ring trying to get him to [ __ ] 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 you've earned the right to you know teach and he was like because my style is still so limited that the fight drug on way longer my i think the quote you get in the book is my preparation hadn't prepared me for this type of fight and i thought that's so [ __ ] brilliant and so for a guy like that 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 ji kundo translates loosely i guess from and this this is from reading the tao of ji kundo as he said it translates to defend by attacking and i was like that's [ __ ] 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 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 and i found myself intoxicated by people like bruce lee who were like [ __ ] that the rules don't apply to me i'm gonna do what works and an obsession with efficiency man if you want to win to to be obsessed with what works is the only obsession to have 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 fuel that and you know you'll lose your drive if you're being fueled by other people's expectations and and opinions and you know this is so freeing yourself from the concern of others i think you know i talk about the lies and freeing yourself from from other people's you know like looking bad and and failure is a mistake or it's the opposite of success as opposed to it being part of part of success right so i don't want to talk out of class but um i want to have dim sum with linda lee what what is she like like i'm intrigued by the type of person again this is what the 60s i think when they got together um interracial couple would not have been i mean assuming that dragon the bruce lee story is in any way remotely factual uh her family did not want her dating him so she's also somebody that doesn't mind going against trends like what what what does she like yeah so absolutely remarkable as you i mean i've so i've had dim sum like i'm sorry 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 uh room that bruce was actually born and it was their very first time ever visiting it uh because that a few years later they actually tore down the 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 to you know i mean her story in in in dragon is is pretty powerful for people who have seen it um one documentary i like it's called i am bruce lee and uh kobe's in it and all these other people that are in it about how they were inspired uh by by this man you know who really said reset the people's definitions of what was 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 um 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 is you know has accumulated over time you know from all the props from all the avengers and and x-men and everything else but very kind individual very wise um and she's she's a good good martial artist she studied with bruce and that's how they actually met that's right i forgot about that part that that's really interesting man i am so hungry to do a story so i've been trying and trying and trying to and with every like angle that i can to pitch them an idea for a comic of course that i want to turn into a movie but um to do a comic book with them they've they've licensed the bruce lee name out some other comics that have not exactly been amazing uh so i'm sure that's part of their hesitancy um 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 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 [ __ ] out of the dao de jing i was obsessed with that yeah like that 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 under begin to understand why so i watch star wars and this character yoda like just [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] puppet and so that's cool already for a kid um but just the 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 in sound bites it's like yoda was the ultimate [ __ ] soundbyte machine and that one just really stuck with me so he plants because basically yoda is um god i'm going to mispronounce his name terribly loud tzu the guy that wrote the daodejing so basically talks like him if if you've read it you'll like the first time i read the dow dishing 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 doubter and so then you mix in bruce lee and just like that whole era of my life is um is about that 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 [ __ ] 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 um it would have just been perfect because it you know i'm there i'm on campus it's college you like walk 10 feet and you're you know in the place where you're um studying and i was just too weak man it's it's it's a sadness i've thought about doing it do you know who um for us a hobby is all right so do you know george 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 um his trainer is a guy named george uh for us the hobby and i went and trained for exactly one session with for ross for us is one of the most extraordinary humans i've ever met he is a modern day bruce lee this guy is a [ __ ] philosopher extreme yeah [ __ ] incredible this guy anyway i trained with him one time it was amazing and of course i got injured again and i was like [ __ ] like just the so i asked myself that 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 is like [ __ ] 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 there's something there man and i i still find myself drawn to the way that bruce lee talked and the fact that he was such a [ __ ] badass it's 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 i i think about it a lot it's interesting where do you come down on that yeah um i'm mixed it like literally split because the the truth is that i'm i i watch the ufc and i watch occasionally boxing and i watch all the you know i grew up watching sunday kung fu theater so i have this affinity 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 you know 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 and 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 physicality i think is important but you know i also agree that you know if you're going to do something you want to do it you know world class and having somebody coming over to the house a few times a week it might not get you there and then is it going to divert energy and attention and focus off of this you know this enterprise and this empire that you want to build but i i'm i'm i have experimented with martial arts you know as you know the taekwondo classes as a child i did years and years of aikido in college and and post um i did a year of jkd um 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's it it interrupts that that routine but i'm fascinated by it because i think it's a great metaphor for for for life that if you're ground fighting and you know things like leverage you know uh conserving energy you know focal points what's going to give you the most return you know the elegance that that bruce had in his in his in his style you know in terms of optimizing his energy and the the impact you know that those are all strategies that could be mapped out in in business or in relationships or in anything else but i think the physicality is is 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 our time and talent and our mind behind you know there's there's definitely opportunity costs for sure but i i still watch fighting for big fights and uh because i like seeing people who are absolutely world class compete and and do amazing things there's another side to it that i find myself incredibly drawn to which is the 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 it's one of those things that like i don't feel like i am capable as capable of violence as i would like to be i am yeah i mean look i've kept my strength up i work out and so i 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 here i'm like yeah i'm not [ __ ] with that guy like there is something to that the the ability to to be violent and going back to ferraza hobby 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 you know [ __ ] with me or whatever and i give them the grace to calm down walk away that it that it's a choice and that i'm not doing it because i couldn't hold my own and i was like [ __ ] like that is such an indictment of myself right that like man there are things that i let slide that i'm sure i let slide because i'm like uh i don't know how i would fare in this altercation and as like when i worked out that was a huge focus of mine was just being [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] love watching people fight i love martial arts movies jim like you're 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 want to be a ninja like that was my [ __ ] jam dude any movie with a ninja in it i was like sign me up the 80s was like ninja [ __ ] central i was about all of it yeah you pretty much just gave away my skype name and this and this whole thing it's i'm i'm the same i did um there there's a there's a great teacher a friend of mine named tim larkin and he's out in vegas and he created something called target focused training and you know it's controversial because he talks about not only the physicality of protecting yourself and loved ones you know because he's he's world class hall of fame cover black belt magazine as you know instructor but you know but it could cause real physical harm or even you know extended harm or or death and it's controversial because it's he talks about the psychology of violence and how 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 the same social norms as we do and they take advantage of those and there's i remember watching this video that just horrified me it was um the uh it was a police officer cam you know a police woman she pulls over this guy and you see the cam from her car and you know she's going there and she's approaching the car and in there the is the is the man and since the 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 cons you know restraint because she didn't want to you know break any kind of social rules in front of her you know his daughter and and and and this man just beat her and beat her you know because she had that that that you know those those those rules you know and another another book like the good the gift of fear uh the background if you if you're familiar with that book talks about about especially for women to be able to trust their instincts that fear is actually a trigger that that that part of you some unconscious is picking up but sometimes men or women we suppress it and we don't trust that fear uh because we're picking up something that our conscious mind is not picking up and we you know we feel like something's there and then something happens and it's it's a whole great book called the gift of fear where you actually fear is actually a resource for you and a signal to prepare or and so uh some some great resources there and i would love to connect you with the with these individuals like like tim it will it'll change your framework about because he really gets into that again the psychology and the drive of protecting yourself and the consequence of not being able to do so you know i remember i did six months straight of krav maga right you know what they trained like israel like my 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 i the way i learned it in this angry state where you're just destroying whatever's in front of you but i you know for me i needed to self-experiment with it so i i train in in various methodologies i'm not world-class in any of them but i needed to feel what what what feels right for me right but it was but i i would go into like a in my mind to just keep on going and until something is destroyed you know it took me places where i was just like okay i got to stop this because i could feel like kind of leaking into you know other other areas you know that temperature i actually love that [ __ ] like the ability to channel your aggression oh my god i think it is really powerful um in fact in your book you literally quote bruce lee i'd never heard the quote before where he said people don't come to me to learn to fight it was like they come to me to learn how to express themselves physically and whether they want to express anger or something and i was like oh that's interesting learning how to express your anger physically i thought that was really really a key thing going back to what you're saying about the social conventions have you ever seen the movie funny games dude you must watch this movie it is [ __ ] insane so it's um it's a remake of uh a nordic film if i remember right uh but they remade it in america same director and it's about like these sort of late teen kids who understand social conventions they know how to trap people where the only way out of the trap is to be rude and dude watching it i just got the chills it's so unnerving because of how easily they get you to give just a little more a little more a little more until you're in danger because there's no way to say no and uh dude watch it it is it is just an incredible movie that starts with this simple thing of can i borrow an egg and becomes this home invasion it's [ __ ] nuts you have to see it it's unbelievable because at every moment you're like yes oh god like i know that you would say that you would agree you would say yes and they're just using all these social conventions against you until it's too late and you're trapped there's a another moment like that in training day did you see training day oh god it's so good one of the best scenes in [ __ ] movie history when um ethan hawk is in like with all the gangs and they're like hey let me see your gun and it's like oh god what do you do they set it up so perfectly where it's like no we're your friend like what's the problem let me just hear come on man like don't be a jerk and if you say no and you refuse there then chances are that they're going to escalate because you know that even though they're pretending that there's actually this threat of violence so it's like well if i don't give them my gun they may just take it but if i give them my gun then now i'm really in trouble oh god it's so good it makes my palms sweaty just talking about it like in the movie as it was playing out i was like oh my god this is so good social conventions man you're so right they you can really [ __ ] with people just by knowing going back to the whole like you have to be in a place where you can break rules where you can say no [ __ ] that i'm not giving you my gun what are you talking about like that makes people so uncomfortable i don't know if i've ever told you this before but i because i'm a rule follower by nature and i knew that to get good at being an entrepreneur i had to like be willing to tell people no i had to be able to be confrontational like all of it which i by nature i'm not so i would start parking facing the wrong way on a street because i was like yeah i'm so uncomfortable leaving my car because i could get a ticket and i would just do it and be like the rules don't apply to me and i know when people hear that they think like i'm going to cut lines and [ __ ] trust me i would never because when it comes to something that like diminishes somebody else i i [ __ ] hate that i like to see people get along and i have a you know value system that i live by but if you can't buck certain rules you're you will get trapped so easily by social convention so yeah that was a very long tirade but that [ __ ] like gets me yeah super super amped up and i think those rules and those expectations or those norms they keep us limited and a lot of what you know we talk about you and i it's just about again it's a quotable but this idea of transcending about ending this mass hypnosis you know or of of rules or and it's so interesting because in the book you know i i kind of model loosely uh you know the hero's journey right in terms of the the call to an adventure and go through your trials and you find a mentor but when you come back it's kind of like you bring that elixir that that treasured elixir back to the ordinary world just like neo does in the end of the matrix right where he gets on the phone and he's like you know i'm going to show you know people a world without these rules without these limits i'm going to show them what's what's really possible i think that's that's why we're here to show people what's possible because this life that we live you know are really the lessons that we're teaching everyone around us and giving them by doing so you become the roger bannister or the bruce lee or you name it for for your team you know for your family and and you know it's a disruptive time too right like the only people that are going to make a dent right now by following the rules you're going to get those the same kind of results but if you if you break the rules intelligently but you i think it's important to know the rules you know and and then learn them you know and then you could you could change them and and lead to something better for sure so speaking of disruptors man there's somebody you mentioned him earlier and you talk about in the book um your boy stan lee it's crazy how much of pop culture he has given birth to his bananas and in the book you mentioned something in passing and i was like i wanted to call you and be like yo you can't like start the story and then not give me more detail you said that stan lee when you asked him who's your favorite character that you've ever created he said without hesitation iron man why that's so shocked by that why iron man you know i didn't go super deep into into why he did that you know but he loved iron man you know he was obviously in a lot of the iron man you know movies and i have a hypothesis because you know the real iron man was a drunk the ian that he created was a vietnam vet with ptsd who was a drunk [ __ ] and i mean obviously still a [ __ ] really cool character but not quite the iron man that we think of today with robert downey jr so the fact that that's the character do you have a hypothesis as to what it was that he liked oh i wish i had a great answer for you on this yeah when people read iron man the actual comic books he's a degenerate party womanizing he's always drunk all the time and he had his dark you know but there's this dark energy but so i think it made it relatable he was extreme he was in he was an addict i wouldn't define stan in any way like like though that with those kind of characteristics because you know he's always there's always been this this amazing kindness and creativity um i don't know if i had to guess and this is a guess but if i had to guess it went something like this he was a real dude he did not have any superpowers he was a [ __ ] engineer who had to work to create things and he was flawed deeply and i have to imagine like we all look at stanley as like just this unstoppable idea generator i mean it's really really extraordinary if i end up becoming a tenth of the writer and creator that he was i will be beside myself with joy but i'm sure that not how it's not how he saw himself i'm sure he struggled with all kinds of [ __ ] that was frustrating or whatever and writing a deeply flawed character like that who still ends up doing something extraordinary it's a guess but you know everybody else like i i thought for sure he was going to say peter parker just because it's like i had i didn't understand how dominant peter parker was or spiderman was until i looked at the sales figures as a comic book it it isn't a little bigger i mean now it's not but at the height it wasn't a little bigger than everything else it was dominant dominant i mean just like the biggest thing on the planet um so i would have expected him to say that so i don't that's my gut instinct is almost all of his characters were essentially given powers the x-men all born with something peter parker bit by a radioactive spider but iron man was just a dude who engineered armor yeah he was incredibly bright and and i think there's apparently if i walked you through my i took this cam off this ca and walk you through my hallway the original art that i have there is is an original iron man piece and batman you know and the so those those two are interesting because they they they weren't born they were built dude i have like behind like batman puppies behind me and everything but those but they weren't they they mean they were maybe born into wealth you know but they had their hardships there were there were orphans you know like like a lot of superheroes batman iron man wonder woman superman spider-man you know all of these heroes but um but they had a darkness definitely and uh but but they also built themselves you know especially batman you know master of all martial arts and uh and the detective very smart and savvy that way and just like that's it's human and so i could appreciate while i love the x-men and i love spider-man certainly um but those are the ones that i you know have definitely have an original impact and even in the back of my phone you know it's like it's like batman dude i i am a total junkie for superheroes and for sure that's amazing i love that yeah yeah lisa and i actually our first dog was named batman and just uh yeah there's something about for the exact reasons you just laid out right so batman had a sickness he was driven by something and you want to talk about something i can understand like something that you want so badly that you're willing to you know travel the world and learn however many languages and learn to fight and all that yes i get he's a fictional character but it's like i mean that that the ability to attach to a fictional character through narrative to change ourselves is like the defining thing about humans that it defines my business model it defines everything i've given my life to which is you know how do you help people make change you you give them a character that they emotionally invest in and then that person does things and goes through things that you then take and implement in your own life um and for sure batman is you know for me it is a a character type that i think about so often in my own life of staying driven and staying hungry and you know continuing to push when everybody else has given up you have to take something you know for him it was being helpless to stop his parents from being killed but you need that monolithic thing that you put at the center of your life that's going to be your drive and one of the earliest questions i was asking you today is like how the [ __ ] with all the success and for as long as you've done it how do you stay focused and your answer was purpose right having that thing i mean part of your answer i should say um but having that thing that is just monolithic in your life that's why i always tell people man if you're not accomplishing at the level that you want to accomplish you don't you don't even have to tell me anything else i'll just tell you you don't want the vision that you have of your life badly enough you just don't like focus on that focus on building the thirst can't lead a horse to water or you can lead a horse water but you can't make them drink but forget all of that put all your time and energy into making them thirsty right and that's what people need to do in their own life like put all your time and energy into wanting that thing so badly that it that it's an absolutely crushing need in your own life and then all of a sudden you will be far more resourceful than you ever thought you could be and i would say that i i'm personally like evidence of your of your of your business model like when i was growing up i didn't have a lot of friends i didn't have like real life mentors so i would i would lose myself in these kung fu movies or these bruce lee movies because these were the real life superheroes you know the the i just was doing some training for the wwe and i was like i was telling them like it was similar i was you know with with mcmahon's and and everybody uh triple h amazing you know but but growing up for me i remember going to when i was about 10 years old going to wwf at the local like coliseum locally convention center where i grew up and you know and ricky schroeder was there and i'm dating myself like silver spoons you know but you give me superfly snuka and you have the iron sheik but they were like you know dressed up characters because they were like real to me because they were these superheroes and their stories you know they bring out characteristics and i would always i would indulge in these superheroes like spider-man because i felt like i felt his flaws and i felt his awkwardness and i'm i what i'm attesting to is when you're talking about how you built a whole business model around it i would identify and i would learn lessons that i wasn't readily available in my uh physical environment right i didn't have these these mentors or the or these um these these coaches and examples and so i would i would dabble in fixing and i would pretend i was in those comic books and i would learn those lessons and i still do today like i still i still watch you know rocky movies and i still watch the matrix you know almo you know every and um annually and i watch these these places and that that's really where because superheroes for me are people that are flawed but they've discovered and they've developed these superpowers whatever they happen to be but they also represent like hope you know for hopeless kid they also represent real real help you know and also the coming together of these you know like here my mouse pad you know the earners you know when everybody could come together with their own unique strengths you know together on a team you have your integrator and your vision or your starter you you can do amazing things and and so that's a big driving metaphor on my life are there are these fictional superheroes that whether they're real or not batman is real or not in my mind it was growing up and i learned a lot of lessons through it same thing with bruce lee i never you know he passed you know like a week before i was born you know but i always felt this akin watching him and this and this is interesting that that documentary i am bruce lee is all these people all different ages and all different background ethnicities they just they didn't even see them as like an asian dude they just like they just this guy just shattered their mind about like what was possible like all these bodybuilders all these sports athletes all these hip-hop dancers all the all the people and and so like looking for those real world heroes and so you know that that that that i could learn from and i can't wait to see as as more and more books come out and films and things that you could you could you know entertain people and that's i think where empowerment is where people's attention is where they lose themselves for x amount of time in a book or in a movie and afterwards they go through that they feel like you know they they they were the main character and they were liberated at the end you know and the future looks you know a little brighter dude so as you were saying all that it reminded me of something in your book which is the dominant question because you're as you were going you're touching on what i think is my dominant question i've never thought about it before that was a really powerful takeaway for me from limitless and thinking about will smith's dominant question and like what my dominant question is what is that concept of dominant question and and tell that story of what wills is because that really hit me as being a [ __ ] amazing dominant question yeah so i would say that the idea here is that we have what 50 to 70 000 thoughts a day and a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions and that's when we're thinking about something we ask ourselves questions and there are more questions that we ask than other ones just like any kind of uh you know proportionally you know probably three questions you ask more than all the other ones combined on a regular basis consciously and unconsciously and they probably came at an early age because of life conditions like i i grew up feeling i was broken so i was always asking this question how how how can i how can i do this better because i felt like i was such below normal and such at a deficiency so it shaped my questions right my dad left to he lost his parents when he was 13 both of them for heart disease and cancer had to move here and his dominant question was all about family and how to keep the family together because at the age of 13 he lost his functionally right and so these early influences shape your your are like these these inflection points that shape our thoughts and so um the example that i use in there in the book was um the initial one was a friend of mine whose dominant question we figured out is how do i get people to like me and that's her dominant question and you don't know anything you don't know her age you don't know her background you know her where her job is you know what she looks like you know where she lives you know any of that but you know a lot about her personality that if you obsessed about the question how do i get people to like me you know what's her personality like what's her life like you know she's just a people pleaser she's she's a martyr she's always giving to everybody her personality changes depending on who she's spending time with right she gets taken advantage of she's a sicko fan you know all this stuff because you know one question that shapes her whole reality because when you ask a question it shapes your focus even right now and i just have to make this comment about this mass you know fear that that that's going around is just it's not just this physical like threat and virus it's this virus of the mind where our amygdala is being hijacked by fear and we just start it's like it's like a social media algorithm it's like you like all the cat videos and comment out all the cat videos you know instagram's going to show you more cat videos and more cat posts right same thing with your mind as you ask a question you start focusing on that and if you just focus on fear and everything that's wrong in the world that's all you see because your brain is always deleting stuff because there's a billion stimuli that we can focus on and what gets through that filter that's not deleted um are the things that you care about things that you ask questions about and so if you're just focusing on the fear you're not seeing you become very myopic on you feel like that's the whole world and you're not focusing on opportunity you're not focusing on what you'd be grateful for you know or all these amazing blessings and fortunes in your life and that becomes reality and so going back to questions how questions dictate your focus um with with will we we're spending the entire day in toronto so he flies me out and i help you know actors do what i speed read scripts memorize lines stay focused and all that and he's shooting from 6 p.m to 6 a.m so we spend the entire day together and he works hard right he's like i'm like when do you sleep this is so this is so insane because we spent like 10 hours together and then had to go to uh to set but during that process we we found out one of his dominant questions is how do i make this moment more magical actually it was originally how do i make this moment more magical and then we were like can we imp like and then can we make that even better he's like yeah how do i make this moment even more magical so the presupposition is it's already a magical moment right living from that place and i was like wow that that's fascinating and then fast forward to later that evening it's it's winter time we're outside filming uh suicide squad and his family from west philly you know the song we're all outside and we're freezing it's two o'clock in the morning watching these monitors and everyone thinks hollywood you know this they think it's all glamorous and it's just like so so but it's but it's boring right everyone's like you know hurry up and wait and there's waiting and waiting and i remember i was asking him like before i was like how do you get ready because i'm just i just i've learned so much from just you know interacting with you know these these high achievers i was like and what in your mind how do you get ready to you know directors just wait make you wait for hours and he was like jim i don't have to get ready i stay ready i'm like oh okay everybody knows his quote about being on the on the treadmill if he's on the treadmill with you one of two things are gonna happen either either you know he's gonna win or he's gonna die trying to win right that's his determination and one of his superpowers but anyway we're freezing out there his family is freezing and he starts bringing everybody blankets and he starts making hot chocolate for everybody and then he starts telling stories and cracking jokes but his life is a reflection of his dominant question how do i make this moment even more magical and i believe the life we live again are the lessons we teach other people and he was living his question and so my question for for you and everybody who's watching is what do you what do you think your dominant question is and it's not just one but it's just like what do you think that primary question that dictates our focus and your feeling and your in you know what you're gonna do because it deletes that question also deletes everything else if i ask myself why am i so stupid here's evidence here's evidence here's evidence you know or or why why can't i ever achieve this and i find you know like answers answers answers how about what are you thinking as i go through this is what do you think one of your questions are because it shapes our reality yeah one your book uses questions a lot and i think that's really smart really telling um so powerful man the i think it was tony robbins said improve the questions you ask and improve your life or something like that again i'm terrible at speaking in sound bites so as i was reading the will smithing i realized my dominant question is different than that but i'll get to why i was so enamored with his so my dominant question is something along the lines of how do i use story to open somebody's mind to like shift into being basically a growth mindset right i've never had to like make it ultra concise but so that's my my dominant question is around that what i worry about with that is it's at such a high level that it's a great sort of guiding light but what i like about wills is that it's it's of that moment so right now in this exact moment a hundred different times a day i can lean on that dominant question and when you look at how he's gone as far as he's gone it's due in no small part it's not the only part but it's doing no small part to his charm and i think that his charm is largely born out of that right going and getting blankets and getting somebody hot coffee i've never met will but i met somebody that i think has a similar personality type and um watching that play out uh of somebody where they're just so charming that you're like man you just want to be around and sorry i should say it's michael strahan so michael strahan is one of the most charming human beings i have ever met in my life and i don't know if he has a conscious dominant question like that but dude he just makes everybody feel like the center of the universe and it's like he goes on he's going to shake everybody's hand when he meets them introduces himself it's like he's ridiculously famous he doesn't need to introduce himself everybody knows who he is and yet he does it so effortlessly and i don't know man it's just really really cool and having something like that that grounds you right here in this moment versus mine which is sort of very abstract and very high level and doesn't influence how i necessarily interact um it guides the what i build and the companies and you know where what i wake up to every day for sure um and so it made me wonder like because i think you even said it's one of will smith one of will smith's dominant questions so are there different areas that we should have dominant questions in like is there like sort of a two to three limit like how do you see that play out i i think that it's again the power of questions determine our focus so it's you know it's quotable but questions become the answer and that's why i it activates that reticular activating system that makes things appear right like so even study skills sats like even the basic test prep courses will teach you hey don't read for three pages of reading paragraphs and then you know see what questions they ask look at the questions first so when you're reading you're like oh there's an answer there's an answer there's an answer there's the answer where were you 25 years ago jim that would have been very helpful advice and and here's the thing a lot of people when they read they don't remember a lot of what they read because they have no questions so in the beginning of every single chapter i give them questions to prompt them so that they can activate their ras to look for those answers oh that's the answer that's how habits work right this is how to find more of your passion and and and and these are the best brain foods by asking questions up in advance then i'm setting their focus and so what i would say is that we have questions we ask about questions all the time and there's certain questions out of habit we've trained ourselves to ask how to default and some of them are empowering and some of them can be disempowering and i would say there's no greatest person there's not the one question to ask because i'm sure there's a downside if we look for it for every single question because it forces our focus and so it makes us ignore something else and so i feel like it's important uh part of the process that every great story goes through is a story of self-discovery and of self-awareness getting to to know yourself um it's another set of skills to having the courage to to be yourself but also as well but asking these questions about what's most important to me in my life what's most important to me in a relationship because you know to know those values it's kind of important even when you're hiring people to have these these this understanding because it would explain why they do what they do you know what they value most in life security or or some sort of adventure or some kind of uh you know ego promotion whatever it is it explains their behavior it'd be interesting to find out yours your spouse's question you know what's their dominant question or you know people on your team what are they asking themselves on a regular basis but i also feel like we have agency again and we are not stuck with the questions that we've been using for the past x amount of years and that we could reprogram our mind you know by through sheer will and sheer repetition even using little post-it notes around your computer of a question just to remind yourself and get in the habit of doing that i'll give you an example i'm experimenting right now again now that i'm sleeping better on the past this past year with lucid dreaming lucid dreaming is this process of uh being aware have you ever been in a dream and you're aware that you're dreaming very rarely i find it wakes me up but i i know the concept really well so the idea so the idea here i used to do it very naturally as a child but then you know with these sleep issues i would never get into that rem sleep and get that quality where i could get those questions um to be able to have those experiences and now you know somebody was telling me that lucid dreaming is now used for people to deal with trauma to face fears in a safe environment of their imagination where it feels like it's really happening but they could habitualize themselves to their fear of heights or confrontation or whatever in a way that they also know that they're safe and be able to i don't know the science of this is just me you know doing thought experiments but one of the ways to get into that that lucid state is um is asking her the question like 100 times a day is this a dream is this a dream it's kind of like an inception kind of you know moment or are we in the matrix is this this is a dream that the dream is a dream and then the first time the answer is yes because your brain doesn't shut off at night it'll still you know have you ever had a very intense day and you start dreaming about that because your brain is consolidating that stuff and working on it you know we do teach in the book how to remember your dreams because i feel like it could be a source of inspiration that people say and this is anecdotally but you know that paul mccartney came up with a song yesterday in a dream you know frankenstein came to mary shelley in a dream the framework of the periodic table came to a chemist in a dream like a lot of sports figures like jack nicholas he this is well you know documented that he was shooting high 70s in a real slump and he dreamt of shifting his grip of the golf club and the next day shot like 65 you know remarkably better because all this comes in dream elias howe created the sewing machine in a dream so the idea here is we spent 20 years of our life sleeping three to five years dreaming but a lot of people forget their dreams that's why my morning routine i i go through it step by step but how to remember your dreams going back to lucid dreaming it's kind of interesting because the power of the mind is like if you ask yourself this dominant question now my dominant question is like is this a dream is this a dream i just kind of doing it for fun but then you know the other day like literally uh 10 days ago i was i answered i asked that question in my dream and i said yes this is a dream and i just like and i didn't stay in there for very long and you lose track of time in there but i was able to kind of influence my dream i'm just playing with it you know right now i don't have any scientific validation for this process but i know the power of the mind it's like the night before have you ever had to wake up particularly early for a flight or and you had to set an alarm i don't even work off an alarm clock but maybe in the past where you had there's something that was happening and you maybe set your phone alarm or a clock alarm and you wake up like two minutes before the alarm goes off many times isn't that an amazing power of intention you set an intention that just is just i want people to listen just think about the power of our mind right now the night before you obsessed about the specific time and you wake up almost to the minute of that like and now my part of my ritual each night is before i go to sleep and i go through this process is i ask myself a question talk about the power of questions because if i could wake up at a certain time why don't i use it to like do something more extraordinary right to be able to solve something that i'm struggling with perhaps inspiration i did that a lot when i was writing this book because i would have certain areas that i wasn't really well developed and this whole limitless model came from me asking this question because i was obsessed with why don't people do what they know they're supposed to do why isn't common sense not common practice right this whole idea and i was like i have all the methodology i was like and then on my mind i would obsess about it and then i would have like these thoughts and these reveling i wake up in the middle of the night and i would just write them down you know and that's how i came up with the the 3m limitless model that became birthed from me obsessing about this question like what's missing what's missing to make this complete what's missing in this motivation you know equation or what's missing and you name it and i took a bruce lee approach because i didn't i'm not stuck on dogma because i didn't i don't have a phd in education i don't have it you know like a master's in education or psychology or anything else like that i literally out of force will to be able to better myself pulled from all of these areas right adult learning theory and some brain science ancient mnemonics you know speed reading evelyn i pulled from everything like bruce lee because i just wanted something that worked for me that's all i wanted you know i didn't want to do it for any kind of certificate or white paper or anything else i wanted to save my own life and so i wasn't stuck and i didn't grow up in that education paradigm of this is the one way that you could fix this one problem you know like like people doing business you know which is why it was so amazing that you offer like in in itu like living this breadth of training that's not available like outside of like you know ivory tower kind of information of people who talk about it but don't actually do it like i i i would be a poor spokesperson or ambassador or coach you know if i didn't read every single day if i wasn't you know remembering people's names if i wasn't like living this to that's my ability no question but livvy you do my friend and you really put it in this book the book is fantastic man um i read it cover to cover thought that it was amazing i was honored to find myself mentioned but you actually if you told me i didn't remember so when i came across that i was like my man i was honored to be included hilarious to be included for something that i hate uh but that was absolutely wonderful dude i think it came together really really well i think that the ideas that you have are super powerful i hope that people will get the book i think that it will help them because it is so extraordinarily useful the blending of the three things i think you're absolutely right is very very powerful thank you for coming on man really appreciated doing this format with you um as somebody that i know pretty well um can i make a quick mention please yeah i my challenge for everybody who's watching this really is you know that um that you do something different because of it you know when i talked about choice and the power of choice whether it's that blue pill or that's red pill it always comes down to a quality decision and this book i want to thank you for the support just everything over the years um because this is like a legacy because it came i i was in a near-death experience a few years ago and it made me prompt and really put this made me re-evaluate my own value system and i and and that's how this book was really where it was really burst can i can i mention where people could get it of course man please go for it it's something very special at limitlessbook.com limitlessbook.com i want this to be the most read book of 2020 meaning that not the most bought book because i don't you know that would be a pretty audacious that buying a book is very different than reading a book so i want people who are watching this to complete this book because i know what's waiting for them on the other side because i know what's in this book and i know it's in you who are watching this right now so what we did at limitlessbook.com is when people pre-order the book they automatically get a 10-day program a coaching program for me walking them through the highlights of reversing their negative self-talk of of really hacking and un involving their unraveling and unleashing their motivation and i teach them real strategies on speed reading and memory so when the book arrives they're going to finish that book cover to cover i also included two bonus chapters that i'll give people digitally limitless for your team and limitless for your children like how do you make your children limitless and and make this part of your culture in terms of companies and how we're applying it in companies like um like people know that i work with and then finally the other thing about the book is i created this book club where i want you to finish it so there's four sections in the book so after you receive it we go live every single week doing one chapter i mean one section a week together so we read it and then we go and say how we can apply this here are some ways to be able to remember this apply this with your family so four sections four weeks one month post book we all do it together because i want this to be the most finished and applied book of 2020 because knowledge is not power just having a book sitting on your shelf doesn't make you any better than anybody else and i want people to complete it and so thank you for allowing me to talk about it and this has been the most unique conversation like i've ever had on on recording ever and uh and thank you for for the work that you and lisa do and of course man you have a quote in the book i probably won't remember it verbatim but um you said the there's no difference between somebody who doesn't read a book and a person who can't read a book uh and i thought whoa like that's actually a very good point so wanting it to be the most read book i think is is a is awesome also that four-week course is worth its weight in gold man so often people there's like a just a big enough gap between okay read it i kind of understand it i'm not sure entirely how to put it to use in my life so helping people cross that i think would be super powerful so it's very exciting amazing thank you thank you everybody go out and get it limitless i can vouch for it personally it's amazing uh it if you do it and i was actually doing he's got quizzes and stuff like that in it i was doing them which i don't normally i was trying to speed up my reading and just finding like you said that venn diagram of where those three things intersect is uh powerful so everybody go get it jim quick thank you for being here it was amazing my friend and everybody thank you for joining us if you haven't already be sure to subscribe until next time my friends be legendary take care billions of brains really light me up you know you know billions of brains and minds coming online you know being their best version of themselves that's that's really that's really the mission is to change for people's personal education system and how people fall in love with their brains again