Breaking Free From Self-Imposed Limits | Jim Kwik EP 550

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11We've been told a lie that our memory, our intelligence, our genius is fixed, kind of like our shoe size. And through my experience of doing this for the past two decades, nothing could be furthest from the truth. You know, people have unbelievable gifts inside them. They're just not shown how. I always thought it was interesting that school would teach us, like, what to learn. Like, those subjects that are important, math and history and science and Spanish, the what to learn. but never on how to learn. You know, how to focus, how to concentrate, how to be creative, how to think for yourself, how to read faster, how to remember things.

0:42Maybe it should have been the fourth R. Remember reading, writing, arithmetic, but also recall because there is no learning without remembering. And Socrates said that. How I got started on this is I actually grew up with learning challenges. And a lot of people don't know that. But when I was in kindergarten, I had a really bad accident and I had a head injury. And it left me feeling like I was broken. that my brain didn't work and I had these focus issues. I couldn't remember things and it took me an extra two years to learn how to read. And I struggled, you know, privately and then also publicly.

1:14And, you know, when you're that age, you, you know, you get very self-conscious. Sure. You know, you become very introverted and very shy. You don't want to connect with people because you feel like there's something wrong with you. And so that was, that was my academic life. You know, I just worked so much harder. And I don't know if people watching this to relate, but just, you know, struggling with overwhelm or overload. too much to learn, too little time, and it stresses you out. And you're like, why can't I do this? Why is everyone else succeeding so much faster? And I have to do all this, like, not even fair.

1:43So that's kind of early on made you want to then master it since you were having such a hard time? It did. I mean, I think our struggles really could be some strengths. And you know this. Of course. You know, like, you know, when challenge, you know, with these kind of challenges come change, you know, and problems become, you know, help you progress. And so when I got to college, I remember first freshman year in college, I wanted to start fresh. And I thought that I could really make my family proud because they sacrificed a lot. But I was doing so poorly. And I took all these classes and I thought I would do better and have a clean slate, but I actually did worse.

2:16And I remember I wanted to quit school. And at that time, you'd appreciate this, a friend asked me to come visit him and his family out on the West Coast. Because I was on the East Coast and he was like, I go out there. I was like, yeah, I'll just take a weekend, get a little space from school. Because I was thinking about quitting. And when I get there, the family is extremely successful. And I don't just mean financial. They had an amazing home on the water. But they were happy. You know, they were givers. They were learning all the time. And the father, before dinner, asked me these kind of questions.

2:46We were walking on his property. And he asked the kind of questions you would ask somebody who just started college. Like, how's school? And, you know, that kind of stuff. And I broke down crying. I was like, you know, and to a stranger I just met like, you know, 10 minutes ago. I said, I'm ready to quit. School is just not for me. I'm not the one that's smart enough. And he's like, well, why are you in school? You know, what do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to share, if you will? So no one's ever asked me those questions before. And when I started to answer, he paused.

3:12He said, wait. And he takes out out of his back pocket, I swear to you, like a journal and like a diary. And I always thought like 12 year old girls carry diaries and diaries. And he makes me write tears out a couple of pieces paper He makes me write down all the goals like of what I wanted to do in my life And I've never something very powerful about taking pen to paper and just writing like those dreams your aspirations down and After maybe 20 30 minutes he asked me if I'm done and I maybe have 40 50 things there Which is like a bucket list before I knew what a bucket list was and I start folding the sheets of paper thinking I'm done with the exercise, put it back in my pocket, and he grabs it from me.

3:50And I was like, I freaked out because like on that was like, like everything. Exactly. And I don't even know who this guy is and he's very successful. And he starts to just read it. And I'm so intimidating. Out loud? No, in his mind. And I feel this small because everything, I just, I didn't know somebody was going to look at it. Right. And he looks at it and he says, Jim. and I don't know what he was going to say because this guy's very successful. He says, Jim, you are this close to everything on that list. And I'm just thinking, there's no way. How could it give me 10 lifetimes? I couldn't put a dent on that list.

4:26He takes me into a room I've never seen before. And it's wall to wall, ceiling to floor, covered in books. I mean, I've never seen like a library in somebody's house before. And he starts grabbing these books. You'll love this. He starts grabbing books and starts handing them to me and starts to pile up really, really, really high. And when I start looking at the titles, because I'm curious, there are these biographies of amazing men and women in history and some really early personal development books like Napoleon Hill, Thinking We're Rich, and Power Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale, and Psycho-Cybernetics and all these books.

5:01And I'm just like, and then I kind of get an inkling of what he wants me to do with these books and he asked me to read like one of these books a week and I'm just thinking and I say to him there's just no way I just told you I have all this schoolwork you know what 19 now I'm 18 years old yeah I'm like there's no way I have all these right I can't even finish one book I have these reading challenges and I have learning challenges and I have all the schoolwork and he was like Jim he said look me right in the eye I said Jim don't let school get in the way of your education and I didn't even realize that's a Mark Twain quote this is like a couple decades ago I'm just thinking wow and it hit me like that but still I'm like you know what I still can't do this because I have all this work I need to study and then he you know what he does he takes out that list which he still has in his possession my dream list my bucket list and then he starts reading it out loud every single thing line by line and I get chills thinking about it because there's something about watching a man who you just met who's you know very one of the most successful people that you've met and he's and putting it out to universe out loud, you know, your dreams.

6:03Sure. And it's very unnerving. And honestly, a lot of stuff that was on that list, and I think about it, it was things that I wanted to do for my family. You know, these are all things that my family, you know, because I mentioned they sacrificed a lot, like a lot of hardworking people do. And I want to do things for them that they contribute for themselves. So with that leverage, I commit to reading one book a week. Wow. And then I go from that, I go back to school, and now I have all this pile of stuff that I need to learn, and then a pile of stuff that I want to learn. And that puts me over the edge.

6:35Because in order to keep up, I have to sacrifice the things that you know are important to you, that your sleep, things like eating, things like working out, things like relationships. And so no one sees me. I'm just in the library all the time. I don't sleep. I don't eat. And you know that's a recipe for, like, disaster. It is. And how it came up, how it showed up was I was at the library and my body actually, it's the scariest time in my life, it actually just gave out. Like the battery just ran out and I just passed out and I fell down a flight of stairs. I hit my head again and I woke up in the hospital two full days later.

7:08And I was down to, I was hooked up to these IVs because I was malnourished, dehydrated. I was down to 117 pounds. And I thought I died. When I had that thought, I was thinking, you know, what's going on here? You know, because I was ready to check out. like check out of school, check out, check out, check out. Check out of life. And I was just like, I'm a total failure, I can't do any of this. And then when I was thinking about it, I was just, the nurse came in and she had the answer in the form of a mug of tea. And this is a true story. She gives me a mug of tea, of like green tea, and it has a picture of a pretty smart guy.

7:42This is Albert Einstein. And there's a saying on there that you've heard 100 times. It said the same level of thinking that's created the problem won't solve the problem. The same level of thinking that's created the problem won't solve the problem. And it's funny when you put things out in the universe, you know, ask a new question, you get a new answer and maybe say, well, what's my problem? I was like, you know, my problem is I'm a really slow learner. That's what I came up with. I was just like, I'm a really slow learner. Is that your problem or is that your story? That was my, that was definitely my story and my perceived problem there.

8:12And so, and I was owning it too, because I was fighting. No one can tell me different because I was fighting my limitations, if you will. And so I got to keep them. And it became true every day. Yeah, and I was really, and I had this whole story on it, this brain injury and everything, but I was like, well, if my problem is I'm a slow learner, how do I think differently about it? And it was like, well, how do I learn how to be a faster learner? And then I thought about school, and I was like, no, school doesn't teach you those things. It's just the system itself is a challenge, you know, because if you're, if you're watching this and they're stressed, they're overloaded, there's too much that you can be able to keep up with.

8:45it's not their fault. It's because we all grew up with a 20th century education that prepared us for a world that doesn't exist anymore. You know, so right now, like, you know, when we're talking about the brain, how important the brain is, you know, we're not paid for our brute strength. We're paid for our brain strength. We're not paid for our muscle power. It's really our mind power, you know, and so the challenge is where, you know, your brain is this unbelievable supercomputer, but it doesn't come with an owner's manual. When I got out of that hospital bed, I decided to study this subject called learning, like learning how to learn.

9:14I started to pick up every single book I could on brain science, adult learning theory, multiple intelligences, focus and concentration, you know, things really works by, you know, like on flow and stuff like that. And in a very short period of time, 60 days, I swear to you, it was like a light switch just went on. And I started to understand things for the first time.

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10:30Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.