4 Brain Types That Unlock Your Memory Potential (Do This To Improve Your Memory) | Ed Mylett

23:53Jim Kwik:But there's zero, literally zero classes on how to learn. There's no classes on focus, concentration, how to get into a flow state, how to be creative. No classes on memory. I always thought it should have been the fourth R in school. They teach you reading, writing, arithmetic. Obviously, spelling, those are spelled down with an R. This is not one of them. But what about retention, right? Socrates said learning is remembering. remembering and so we want to be able to fill in those gaps for every people of every age and stage of life let's talk about remembering so you're going down the road i wanted to go down one of the other things i talk a lot about is the ras so i'm rereading the book this is like i don't know two weeks ago and there's this little blurb in the book where you say the question the questions are the answer yeah and it's kind of an ras hack this is huge for those of you that want more retention, want more focus.

24:43So explain that to them, Jim, because this is right up my alley and a use of the RAS that I'd not thought of before.

24:49Jim Kwik:So primarily our brain is a deletion device, right? It's trying to keep information out at any given time. There are millions, if not a billion different stimuli we could focus on externally or internally. And if we let all that in, we would go insane. We'd be completely overloaded and overwhelmed. And so what we pay attention to, RAS kind of acts like a spotlight and draws attention to something that maybe we weren't paying attention based on something that's important to us. Like hardwired into our reticular activating system is our name. That's why names are so important because it's one of the early things that we learned when we were children, probably one of the very first words we heard, one of the first words we learned how to write and think about the love and the encouragement most people were given around their name.

25:40Jim Kwik:That's why they say a name is the sweetest sound to a person's ears. So that is part of your RAS. I was running a marathon years ago in Washington, DC. And I remember at the 18th mile, somebody was shouting my name, Jim, right? Very common name. And I know I didn't know the person, but I still looked because I'm wired to look because my RAS allows that in. So one of the ways of stacking and utilizing your RAS is by asking questions. So questions shine a spotlight on the things that are important to us. So as an example, years ago, a long time ago, my younger sister would send me emails and postcards of a very specific breed of dog, a pug dog, right?

26:23Jim Kwik:And my question was, why does she keep on sending me all the dozens and dozens of photos of pug dogs. And I realized that her birthday was coming up and she was, she's a great marketer and she was seeding her gift. Right. And a funny thing happened is I started seeing these pug dogs everywhere. I would be at the health food store and the person in front of me, I swear is holding a pug dog ready to, to, to pay the register. I was jogging in my neighborhood and there's this guy walking six pug dogs. Now, my question for every single person listening is, did those pug dogs law of attraction just magically pop into my neighborhood, they teleport and manifest around me?

27:04Jim Kwik:No, they were always there, but my brain was deleting it because that wasn't important until I started asking the questions. And then I started seeing these pug dogs everywhere. Even a basic study tip is you read all these reading comprehension, all these paragraphs, maybe multiple pages, and then you get 10 questions at the end that the the testers want you to be able to answer well the first and foremost you should read those questions first right because you don't want to get to the end of reading you know multiple pages on a time test and they say oh that's what was important then you ask the questions at the end first and then all of a sudden when you're reading it you're like oh there's an answer there's an answer there's an answer and it just makes it more seamless like even how we design the book it's not just teaching you accelerated learning, speed reading, memory improvement, focus flow.

27:51Jim Kwik:But it's also structured in a way. Like every chapter starts with three questions, right, to get people's RAS engaged. So when they're reading, they're looking for those answers specifically. Okay. That's brilliant. That is brilliant right there. Okay. So everybody, you're teaching something to someone and you're trying to retain information. It's the questions that guide that light in your RAS to find the answers. Here's the other thing I've always struggled with. And I know the answer now because it's in the book, but I want you to give it to everybody or one of them. I had a hard time in college, particularly during lecture where I would write notes and then I'd remember nothing.

28:27And then a lot of the people listening to my show go to events. They go to business events. They're taking notes the entire time. And I know this because I host events and I speak at a lot of them. The retention level, I think even most people listening to this to be honest and say, is very, very low. So one of the things in the book, you actually teach hacks on how to properly take notes. And this is stuff, you guys, this will help the students in your life. This will help those of you that are trying to learn and grow. Here's how I know this is big. Sasha, my producer just leaned in as I asked that question because people want to know this because it's something everybody relates to.

29:03I've gone back and looked at notes from meetings that are two and three years ago in my life, brother. And I'm like, I have no recollection of writing this down. I have no recollection of anything this person just said. And I even noticed this with my son. He's a really, really good golfer. When you play golf gym with someone who's a great golfer, you and I have talked about golf quite a bit actually. And my son can remember every shot on every single hole that he's played. I can't, I could play a golf course on a Saturday, come back on a Sunday. I don't even remember the fourth hole. And one of the reasons I believe is my son is taking notes on his round as he plays it and it upgrades his retention.

29:39So give us some note-taking tips and hacks for retention.

29:43Jim Kwik:So as you mentioned, you and I, we produce events, we speak on the same stages and we know that with the forgetting curve, if they hear a speaker just once within a couple of days, most of it is gone 80 % at least. And then over time, it just disappears for a lot of people. And one of the ways of mitigating that is by taking proper notes. Now, it's interesting because people could take digital notes or handwriting notes, but when university students are tested for the things that matter, comprehension and retention of the information, then actually handwriting notes by far performs better for both understanding information and retaining information.

30:20Jim Kwik:I would say also one of the reasons, like digital note-taking is great for storage and sharing information, but if you can do the handwriting notes first and then digitize it, or you have a device that allows you to take notes and it digitizes it automatically, then that's preferred. But one of the reasons why is most people could type pretty fast, and you could probably type and transcribe as fast as Ed and I are speaking, but nobody can handwrite notes that fast. So part of handwriting notes, one of the reasons why it's more effective is it forces you to filter the information, to organize it and prioritize the information because you're not writing every single word down.

30:57Jim Kwik:Even when university students are tested, the actual worst way of taking notes besides not taking notes is full transcription. the best way is having key ideas and key thoughts so you know and maybe putting it and capturing it in a way like uh more whole brain like mind mapping is a very famous way of using both your left and right brain i have a very simple way that anybody a lot of people won't they won't grasp mind mapping because it has colors and it looks a little bit too creative so if you're not a dolphin maybe it doesn't really mesh with you then i would say simple way of taking notes is take a piece of paper and a few people happen to be watching this on the video i'll just illustrate it but just you don't even have to see this put a line right down the page and on the left side i want you to capture on the right side i want you to create now that's very very subtle so on the left side the things we're talking about here what are the best brain foods what are the top entropics to boost your your focus and your productivity how do you read faster right that Now, that's your capturing.

31:57Jim Kwik:But if your mind is going to wander, your right brain is going to search for entertainment elsewhere, I'd rather it go on the right side of the page instead of thinking about other things. So what you're going to write on the right side is you're going to write your impressions of what you're capturing. So I'll say it in a different way. On the left side, you're capturing your note taking. On the right side, you're creating your note making. And so it's a very, very subtle difference. but you're on the right side you're writing your impressions of what you're capturing so maybe you're putting things like how does this relate to what i already know how can i use this when will i use this what questions do i have you know about this about this subject matter and so that's a very left brain right brain more whole brain way of taking notes it's very simple and i feel like it's so important nowadays most of your listeners have forgotten more about personal growth and wellness and success than most of their friends and family have, right?

32:54Jim Kwik:And they're probably thinking like, you know, but you still need to keep it elegant, taking complex information. I'll read all the white papers, but I always realize that education doesn't really get the result. If you can make it super simple, like what is the tiniest action I could take right now that would give me progress towards this goal where I can't fail. And this is something so simple. and the return is so, the reward is so huge. What about teaching something? So when you leave an event, is it healthier for retention? If say you go home and your boyfriend or girlfriend or your spouse says, Hey, what did you learn there to actually download and teach them what you've learned?

33:31Do I've always felt like I retain more when I teach or is that a fallacy or is there some accuracy to that?

33:37Jim Kwik:Yeah, it's absolutely true. They call it the explanation effect. The explanation effect basically states exactly what you said. When you learn something with the intention of teaching somebody else, you're going to learn it so much better. And so even when people are listening to this episode, why wait? Do it right now. Think about if you had to think about somebody you wish was listening to this. And obviously, they should post it and share it and spread your podcast. I think everyone listens to your podcast already. But if they had to give a TEDx talk the following week, would they focus better?

34:12Jim Kwik:Of course they would. Would they take better notes? Of course they would. Would they post more questions on social media? Of course they would. They would own that information. So when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. And that's the explanation effect. It's a wonderful way of accelerating your learning. Okay. So I'm going to ask you a dual question. I want to go back to something you said earlier because you finished it and then I was so excited to ask you the next question. But this nootropics idea, there's a couple things in the book that are new. The nootropic stuff I'd like you to talk about.

34:41And this is going to sound disconnected, but to me it's like nourishment. So I'm going to ask both questions together and then you can go. You also talk about the second brain in the book. The second brain being the gut. So talk about nourishment. And I'm just going to throw the ball at you and let you kind of kick it around and answer it back. But you know why I'm asking them together. One, what nootropics do you recommend if you do? I know you do, but if you do. And then tied into that, because it's kind of nourishment for the brain, so to speak. What about this second brain aspect as well with your gut?

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36:58Jim Kwik:So, I mean, everyone can imagine like their brain is the leaves of a tree and then going down in the soil is and the roots are coming from your gut. And so your second brain is incredibly wise, but if it's clogged up with all this processed foods, high sugar food, refined foods, lots of ingredients that we don't even know how to pronounce, then there could be some issues there. There are certain foods, every ingredient that we talk about, we talk about the best brain foods, but also we added a new chapter. The new book's all about momentum. We talk about mastering your mindset, your motivation, how to overcome procrastination.

37:35Jim Kwik:I have a formula for that. And then also the methods for accelerated learning. speed reading, memory enhancement, focus flow, and all that. And the focus of the new book was really about momentum. And so knowing your brain type gives you momentum, right? And knowing the brain type of other people allows you to sustain it. AI, we talk about AI improving your HI, your human intelligence, and different ways you could do that to create momentum. And nootropics is a whole area of science called neuro-nutrition. So there's certain things, ingredients that your brain is only 2 % of your body mass, but requires 20 % of the nutrients.

38:10Jim Kwik:And some of those nutrients are different than the rest of your body. And so in no particular order, and I would always prefer people get it from foods, but we know how depleted foods are. And sometimes when we're traveling and eating at hotels or fast food, we don't get those nutrients. So for example, there are brain supplements and there are nootropics. And I'll go through some of each. So choline would be a brain supplement. It's a nutrient. It's usually found in eggs and soybeans. it plays a vital role in brain health. It's a crucial component of acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter that supports things like memory, things like cognitive function.

38:49Jim Kwik:And so, you know, if you're not getting it from your eggs, then you could supplement with it. Another brain supplement are omega-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA, because your brain is mostly fat. And DHA is the primary, it's the structured component of the brain that plays a key role in memory, and overall brain health and function and so if you're not getting it from wild salmon sardines you might need a supplement so a nutrient profile because i talk about in the book meta learning the art and science of learning how to learn but that's the software we still need to take care of the hardware that three pound matter between our ears called our brain and so if you're lacking vitamin d your your b vitamins so important especially b6 b9 which is folate b12 it's vital for brain health you're not going to be able to get it affects your mood if it affects every brain function magnesium i mean these are the basic supplements it's so important it's literally responsible for hundreds of physiological processes um but it affects your learning your memory your mood um and it could also affect your sleep also as well the magnesium three and eight has been shown to help people to to sleep better but going into the nootropics Some of my favorites, ashwagandha.

40:04Jim Kwik:It's an adaptogenic herb. And again, I'm not a nutritionist or a doctor. You could just, but everything we put into the book, I reference all the human studies. I've noticed, I just jump in. Ashwagandha has helped me with like anxiety as well. Yeah. It's incredible for, it improves mental and physical resilience. It can help, as you mentioned, reduce stress and anxiety and also improve cognitive function. There's a nootropic, It's a whole coffee fruit extract. So whole fruit from the coffee plant is usually a byproduct that they throw out, but it's an extremely strong antioxidant. It has a positive impact on cognitive function.

40:43Jim Kwik:There's something called phosphatidylserine, which is a phospholipid, and these are big words, but it is so important for brain cell membranes. It's been shown to improve memory, learning, cognitive function. L-theanine is an amino acid. It's often found in green tea. It's a very popular nootropic. It promotes relaxation without the drowsiness, and it can enhance brain function. What I like about it is if you pair it with caffeine, for me, I'm very sensitive with caffeine personally, and it really can affect my sleep and give me the jitters. But L-theanine helps to mitigate that. And so if you pair it with caffeine in the morning, I have to do it in the morning because I can't do caffeine past like 12 or 2 o 'clock.

41:29Jim Kwik:it gives you more of a relaxed alertness if you will but something that i think that people don't realize is a popular workout supplement called creatine you know it's a substance that's naturally produced in our body it's primarily found in meats and fish but if you're not getting enough of it it plays a crucial role in energy metabolism specifically not just for your muscles but also your mental muscles. So it helps you to create more energy, more brain energy. So if people suffer from mental fatigue, a little brain fog, it could improve your cognitive function, especially in tasks that require a really strong short-term memory and quick thinking.

42:13Jim Kwik:So creatine is a fun one. We talked about last time some of the foods, and turmeric was one of the brain foods, but it's the curcumin. That's the active ingredient that has potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits, very neuroprotective. Many people know I had a traumatic brain injury when I was five years old. I was put in special education because I had learning difficulties. I had migraines every single day. I just thought it was normal for kids to just kind of be in chronic pain. And I had balance issues and took me three years longer to learn how to read. And then the last one I'll mention is lion's mane mushroom.

42:48Jim Kwik:It's getting a lot of, especially the past few years, a lot of attention. It's a unique nootropic. It has neuroprotective effects. Whole area of science we're talking about, it's called neuro nutrition again, but it's been shown to stimulate the synthesis of nerve growth factor, which could enhance cognition by reducing inflammation and promoting overall good brain health. You said something about trauma when you were young, and I'll let you in on something. Both Jim and I are shy. I think we bond over it. So when we're in green rooms or there's lots of speakers around, Jim and I usually try to find a way to be alone together or we actually get alone because we're both extremely, I think it's safe to say, extremely introverted, both of us, which surprises people because we're both speakers.

43:31We're in public all the time. But it's definitely true for me.

43:37Jim Kwik:And I think people are surprised to hear that if they're hearing that from you the first time because you were like the best speaker on stage and I think people but you have to be that expressive because otherwise you want your stories wouldn't land right um or you want to have the impact that that you're you desire and that you know people deserve thank you um but yeah well I think they'd be surprised at that with you and I think one of the reasons I love Jim one he's just a kind gentle generous brilliant man he'll give you the shirt off of his back he's done things for me, you guys, just so you know, like on short notice, moved things, moved his world around to be there for me.

44:14And it's something I've told him I'll never forget and I will never forget. But the other thing that I've never forgotten, if you just share it for a minute, you should talk about trauma when you're young, is I picture little Jim in school and he's not doing very well. So he gets a chance to, I think the story is do the extra credit and to do an extra work. but this notion of I think every human being can relate on in their way to this moment that happened to you in your life and I don't want to tell the story I want you to tell it because you lived it but I actually was telling my children because they knew I was interviewing today for Thanksgiving I was talking to him about hey what do you have coming up I said I'm excited I get to talk to Jim again and I said my son really loves Jim's speaking style it fits my son's personality very, very well.

45:00That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milet show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Welcome back to the show, everybody. I'm so excited about today because the woman sitting across from me is the definition of brilliant. Oh, you're sweet. It's just true. And she is always the smartest person in the room and never feels the need to prove it to you. And that's the real definition of humility and brilliance combined. She's a cognitive neuroscientist and a true mental health expert.

45:33And her works made a huge impact in my life. The last time she was on the show, you guys went crazy because of how detailed her messaging is and her content is. And so Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you for being here today. Oh, Ed, thank you so much for that lovely introduction. I'm very, very, very flattered, I'm very honored. Thank you. And I love talking to you. You're an amazing interviewer. Thank you. You pull the beast out of me. Well, I love listening to you. She also has a new book out that you can preorder right now, depending on when you listen to it. But you can border it at any time. But How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, A Guide to Building Resilience and Managing Mental Health.

46:10You wrote this for How to Help Your Child. But when I'm reading the work, I'm like, this just helps humans, right? That's what it's for. But so what is something, a strategy? You said awareness of the thought helps it lose its power over you. I'm using my description of it, right? So I've always said that. Now I know why. Yes. Okay. What is something, a tactic or a strategy or a technique that somebody can use for their child or themselves that can help this in these 63 days that you would be proposing they do? Okay. So what you do is you do the five steps of the neuro cycle because what I did was strategically look over the years at how can you actually find the signals and do this whole deconstruction thing.

46:48Okay. So you can't do it in one shot. So what you want to do is do a neuro cycle, which is five steps. What are they? And I'll go through those in a moment. But you're going to do five steps in the sequence. The first part of the sequence is the first more or less three weeks where you go through the five steps in around 15 to 45 minutes, not more and not less. Then the second 42 days where you're stabilizing, you just do it in five minutes. So the five steps are basically gathering awareness. Awareness. And notice I say gathering. Okay. So it's a very conscious and deliberate. It's not like a mindfulness awareness, which this is beyond that.

47:22So when we talk about mindfulness, meditation, breathing, decompression, all of those are very important to prepare the brain. So what you would do before you dive into the neurocycle, and you'll see this in my books and in my app. I've got an app as well called the neurocycle. There's a two to three minute brain preparation, which could be anything from focusing on momentum worry to doing a 310 breathing exercise. So it's something to just get the neurophysiology under control. Or it could be a meditation, a prayer, whatever. Then you move into the actual work. And I'm about to slip off this chair.

47:52Okay, go ahead. Then you move into the work. I get so into this. Into the work of gather awareness, step one. So gathering awareness is a very specific process. Everything's very layered. Your mind-brain connection, psychoneurobiology, mind-brain-body. I'm actually a psychoneurobiologist to study that connection. It's very ordered and sequenced and structured. And if you want something to change, you've got to follow the steps of the order. So the neurocycle is a system in that you can put CBT techniques, you can put prayer, you can put whatever works for you, but put them in the right step. So when we gather awareness, we are gathering apples off a tree.

48:28We're not just randomly looking at things. You're very organized. Okay, what am I going to gather awareness of? My emotions. I'm feeling depressed. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling frustrated. Whatever. Just label them. Related to that emotion. What am I doing? What are my behaviors? What am I doing? What am I saying? How am I doing and saying them? So maybe it's depression and maybe it's withdrawal. Then the third thing is you're going to say, how do I feel in my body when I'm feeling depressed and withdrawing? Maybe cardiovascular issues, part palpitating. And then fourth category is how am I looking at life in this moment?

49:01As I feel depressed, gut ache, and withdrawing, I feel that life sucks. Very simple example. Those are four signals. So you go, step one is to gather those four. step two is to ask why okay you're going a little deeper why am i feeling these emotions now you're not solving the whole problem don't try and solve it in one day just go as much as you can handle it's very draining so that's why i say limit so it's why am i having this maybe i'm having this depression i seem to be having it because of it's happening a lot i'm not sure why but it's happening five times a day or it's feeling or it's happening once a week oh if it is once a week what am i having the same behaviors why am i getting that why am i doing that withdrawing how often am i with doing?

49:40What other things am I doing? Why do I think I'm doing that? So you work through each of those signals and try and get some more. Don't stay too long on those two steps and then you write. Now you don't journal, you write. You dump. You literally dump what you've gathered awareness of and what you have reflected on. Because the first step was to gather awareness. The second step was to do this reflection thing. And then you dump it down on and literally remind them. Just write it all over the page. I've developed a system called the Metacog. And for kids, it's the bubble cog. And it's basically writing in a way that looks like a tree.

50:13So it's starting from the middle and it's working around in circles and branches and colors and arrows. And everything's connected. Everything's either on a line, in a bubble. If you don't like doing that, just write any old way. But try to write dimensionally. Don't do it in lines. Try and just put it all over the page. Because it forces the two sides of the brain to work together. creates a very strong connection between the conscious and the subconscious through the bridge of the subconscious. And it starts diving deep. I mean, it's like I can tell you now that when I work with patients that who had symptoms of schizophrenia, this is an extreme example, but just to show you how well this works, we would have them just basically medicoge out all these steps I'm going through, and they would have one whole personality on this side, and they'd be continuing the same conversation in another hall.

50:58So you'd see the shift, and then we could show them, hey, look what's going on, and from there we could pass I unpack and find roots and things like that. So it's phenomenal in getting insight. Now you spoke about introspection earlier on. Introspection, insight, it means diving into the depths of the non-conscious. That's the most intelligent part of us. So is writing part of step two or is that step three? Step three. So writing is step three. Sorry. Gather awareness, step one. Reflect, step two. Writing, step three. You're bringing order out of chaos. You're getting those three steps are taking deeper, deeper, deeper, getting increasing your introspection, insight, pulling up things that are associated.

51:30Now, that is things all over the page. A lot of it won't make sense. Things may shock you that come out. Day one, not really. But as you progress through the days, more and more will come up. And, for example, around day seven, people start saying, oh, I never saw this connection. Day 14, like insight into, oh, that's associated with that. I didn't see that. This is why I'm doing this. So there's tremendous growth. If you don't force it, you just go through the cycle. Do you think, I want to interrupt you, but I want to ask you, do you think during that awareness and the writing and that you are uncovering some of the things that may trigger you as well?

52:03Totally. So it's step four. Excellent question. Step four is looking at what you've gathered, awareness, reflected on, and written. You look, what are my triggers? What are the patterns? This has happened. What can I do? So step four is moving towards reconceptualization, reconstruction, healing, putting plant food on the roots to heal them. It's leading to that acceptance. You're not going to know why someone raped a child, why someone did this. That's their story. But that's your story. So you need to find out, I'm not crazy. I don't have a broken brain. I'm not genetically flawed. I don't have a mental illness.

52:34I'm showing up like this because of what happened to me. I can't answer why. I have to get to a certain level of acceptance. But at least I know why. It's not me. It's because of. And that helps you heal and move forward. So it's very progressive. It's not walking in circles round and around and around. You know, this is where you can bring in things like this. Psychodynamic theory. There's a lot of different therapy techniques that people can bring in experiences from EMDR and into all these, because this is a system. Yeah, into these spaces. What's the fifth step? The fifth step is an action, active reach.

53:08So you go into from the triggers and things like that, you want to move towards an antidote for today, an action for today. So what can I do today to keep me in a safe space? I've done the work for today. I'm not going to fall back into working on this anymore. I've got to get going through the day. And also your brain and mind need a rest. They get tired. So it's an action. It's like a visualization, a statement, a combination, a little prayer, an affirmation. So this is where you would fit an affirmation or a CBT type technique, like maybe a little visualization exercise. So it's something that you do and say, maybe something as simple as, I can do this, I don't know how, and then visualize a rainbow.

53:44I mean, it could be something as simple as that to an actual little technique or it could be a breathing technique. So it's an action that keeps you going through the day, which helps you focus on the fact that you are moving towards healing. So you're removing energy from this thing because this process has brought this from the non-conscious to the conscious and it's weakened these branches. In the non-conscious, it's strong and driving. When the non-conscious and conscious are working together, then this is weakened. The protein branches, the chemicals, so I can start restructuring and reorganizing.

54:16See, I've got to tell you what I'm thinking when you're doing this because this applies to two different people. So everybody stay in here, okay? So those are the five steps to sort of begin to rewire yourself or change your brain. The other part of me listening to this is if you're thinking, I really don't have a lot of these issues of anxiety or worry or depression. I also think that's the formula to create a change. Like if I had a goal and ambition, I'd become aware of what I wanted, right? Touch it. I'd have all these reflections about it. I would then write about it. And I like the idea of it not being linear like a book but actually all over the place.

54:47So that's almost like a dream personal vision board or dream board that you're doing. then I'd think about what were the triggers I need to create to generate this state could be snapping my fingers it could be seeing something could be walking into my office it could be getting into my car it could be a particular person so I'd use that trigger to then create that state and then obviously the fifth would be what's an action that I can take towards this step so that that cycle can be used to uncover trauma you know reverse trauma create brain health but can also be a creative process in order to change your life.

55:19So you are brilliant because that's exactly where I started my research. 38 years ago with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and people that just wanted to improve their life. They just wanted, and it's called brain building. So it's the neuro cycle and that was the first iteration of this thing was to develop brain building. So it was helping kids learn. So getting data in as opposed to deconstructing, it was constructing. So it's taking from the knowledge in school to learn for an exam or what is the goal in your vision? So that's the brain building aspect of the neuro cycle.

55:48This is huge right here. I've got to tell you something because everyone always wants to create change. They're like, all right, do I get a vision board out? Like, do I? So this is a five-step process. It actually does it. To actually do it. Over the 63 days. And by the way, in 63 days, you're a different human being. Totally different. I do a thing. You're talking about visualization techniques. I should share this with you and then maybe you can speak to why it might work. So everyone asks me, I don't visualize very well. Yes, you do. You just need to get quiet. And it's a muscle you build. When you decide to start visualizing your life, it is difficult.

56:17But one thing I've done is I've created, I teach it to a lot of my athletes, is I use what I call a highlight reel technique. So what I actually start with is I start, I've never said this on the show because it's part of my private work, but I want you to speak to it. I actually start by visualizing memories from my life that are highlights. So it could be, for example, the birth of my son, the birth of my daughter, a home run I hit in baseball, an award I got, a sale that I closed that was important. These are things my brain are already familiar with, to your point earlier. It's already been wired.

56:50I've already repeated the emotion. It's already in there. And so I see those things, and those are easy for me to recall because they're familiar. And then I move to what I want. So my brain, I think, begins to think they're one big highlight reel. Is there any data to prove that that's true? Meaning I'm already visualizing something I want. I've seen an achievement. I've seen an achievement and then I see the one that I want to achieve and for me My brain more easily sees the future When I start with things that I'm already familiar with in my past because I think we do that in reverse So if we've had a traumatic someone's hurt us in our life We see this we repeat it over and over and then we then regenerate it in our real life with the next relationship And that's why people end up dating the same person Exactly right exactly okay So I'm jumping out of my chair with excitement because you've said exactly the correct thing.

57:41So what you've just described, remember I said a moment ago, I spoke about how I'll recall this conversation because it's a great conversation and I'll build it. That's what we're talking about here. So you are recalling these. You're recalling those and you're using those to unmask your natural resilience. Yes. That's exactly right. So I actually call these insurance policies. Okay. So when I work with a person to actually be able to build their brain, we're building an insurance policy. So you should be spending time on doing exactly that. So as you do that, you activate a whole different way that your energy flows across the two sides of your brain.

58:15You go into the highest level of intelligence. You unmask resilience. You increase your wisdom. You tune into the depths of your non-conscious where pretty much your intelligence resides. Right. Because your conscious is basically a workhorse, and it's guided by your non-conscious. So what we've got to see is what is dominant in the non-conscious. Now, your non-conscious is a gentle lady, gentle man, and it's basically always looking for the things that are blocking this growing and keeping you stuck in those. So it's on your side. But you have to tune in to what's coming up. So when you describe when you want to do something difficult, you first think of something good.

58:52What you've done is you've listened to wisdom from your non-conscious, which is that process. You've then called those up. You've activated your resilience. You've put yourself in a highly intelligent, wise state. Now you're in a state that's more able to cope with that. So when I work with a patient, for example, I would never start with that. I would say, okay, let's talk about, you know, your favorite moments or your tell me a story about tell me a great movie. Yes. You know, let's talk about a great book, anything. And then you would focus on that. When they were in that state, I knew that I had got the mind-brain connection, the psycho-neurobiology.

59:22I feel like thinking about the things that have been positive in my life or experiences creates a neurochemistry to which I can create. That's exactly what you do. Right. Yes, you have. You've changed all the flow. These change. They increase gamma, which is a way that you want to flow. And when your eyes are open, you want what we call low gamma across the whole brain. And then there's certain other patterns. I won't go into the details. And that's got to go into a certain beta pattern and so on. Those energy waves, when they are flowing in that state, they activate the different parts of the brain to then be on high alert to respond and do what they're designed to do.

1:00:01which then impacts your neurochemistry, then your endocrine system, your cardio. Everything then comes together and you are in this prime state. Your HPA axis is now on high alert and you now are in the ideal state for solution finding. This is so good. You guys, this is why I do the show right here. So let me just give you this again. Step one, gather awareness. Step two, reflect. Step three, write, play, draw. Step four, recheck. Step five, active reach, which is basically what we've been describing here. That was a great conversation. Be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify.

1:00:31Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Milet. Super excited to bring this gentleman to my left here today because if you take his IQ and you take mine and you average them together, you may actually get an average IQ out of the two of us here. So this is Dr. Joe Dispenza and Joe is, I think he's a peak performance expert is what I would really call you. I think you help people reach their peak and their ability to perform in their life, but he's really an expert at the mind, body, spirit sort of connection and helping you really be a happier version of yourself.

1:01:01And so we're going to talk about all the details of that today with you. So Joe, thank you for being here. You're welcome. I'm happy to be with you. That's wonderful. And we are at Bulletproof Labs, by the way, in Santa Monica, California, which is one of the most impressive places I have ever been in in my life in terms of the cutting edge of human performance as well. And so check out Bulletproof Labs when you get an opportunity to do that. So let's max out our time here together. All right, let's go. So you say all kinds of things that I'm fascinated with, but I think you're fascinating because because you've become this expert in a field that's very unique really to you.

1:01:31And the way you explain things, people always wanna know how to perform better, how their brain works. And I think you show them how to do it, but also why it works. And I'm fascinated by that. But you didn't start out in this industry, right? So before we go to all the great stuff, how the heck did you become you? Like I've read about you, you were actually, you're a chiropractor prior, correct? Yeah, I started out as a chiropractor. So tell everybody about you just a little bit. Well, let's see. I... I got started on this, I think most of the time when we wake up, we need a wake-up call. And I was in Palm Springs, California.

1:02:07I was in a triathlon. I was on a biking portion of the race and I was making a turn and I was passing two cyclists on the corner. And there was a cadet, a police officer, kind of pointing at me, waving on to make the turn, like this. And he had his back to the oncoming traffic. So when I made the turn, a four-wheel drive Bronco going about 55 miles an hour, caught me from behind and catapulted me out of my bike. Oh my gosh. Anyway, when you land that hard on your rump or on your back, the force of that compression takes the columns of the vertebrae and compresses them. So I had broken six vertebrae in my spine.

1:02:43Oh my goodness. And I had bone fragments on my spinal cord. And the very top segment, the eighth thoracic vertebrae, I broke T8, T9, T10, T11, T12, and L1. and T8 took the compressive force and I flexed. And so when I flexed, it compressed that vertebrae more than 60%, and the arch where the spinal cord passes through broke like a pretzel. So I had multiple compression fractures of my thoracic spine. I had bone fragments on my cord because when you compress a volume of something, the volume has to go somewhere. So it went back on the cord, and the neural arch of the athoracic vertebrae was compressing the cord as well.

1:03:24Oh, my goodness. So anyway, a typical procedure for something like that is called a Harrington rod surgery. And they cut off the back parts of your vertebrae. It's called a laminectomy. In my case, it would be from the base of my neck to the base of my spine. Got chills. And then they screw in these stainless steel rods, and the action of screwing into the bone causes a cantilever. It kind of pulls the column off the cord in some cases and opens up the nerve supply. And then they take bone fragments from your hip and they paste it over the top and they hope for the best. And so I had four opinions from four of the leading surgeons in Southern California.

1:04:06And it was unanimous that I needed that procedure. Now, I was in a lot of pain. I had some neurological problems. And they told me if I didn't have the surgery, I would never walk again. So I decided against the surgery and I thought I didn't want to live handicapped. I didn't want to be in a wheelchair and I didn't want to be addicted to pain medications. So I thought I might as well take a chance here. So I didn't really know what I was doing at the time. I was going to say, the chance on what? Did you know what the alternative was? Well, I think that I believed that this voice kept coming up in my head saying, the power that made the body heals the body.

1:04:43and and I thought well God this power is an intelligence and intelligence is consciousness consciousness is awareness awareness is paying attention it must be paying attention to me can I ask a question yeah did you think this way prior to that incident yeah to some degree I think I think that most of us are philosophical to some degree you know we have a philosophy about life but when you're initiated that means you have to initiate that philosophy so love I had to take what I knew and weigh it against what I didn't know. And I think one of the worst places we wind up as human beings is indecision.

1:05:21And so I had very, very strong authorities telling me, you're never going to walk again. You have a head injury. I don't know why you're deciding against the surgery. If it was my son, it would be on the operating table. Anyway, I checked out of the hospital, and I began the process. I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't doing anything. I was laying face down and I said I'm not going to let any thought slip by my awareness that I don't want to experience. And if this intelligence is truly a consciousness, I have to be present with it. And so what I did was I just started reconstructing my spine and my mind, vertebrae by vertebrae.

1:06:00And then, you know, I'd start off doing that and the next thing you know I'd start thinking about should I sell my home, should I sell my practice. and I realized that the template, the design that I was creating wasn't complete. So I'd stop, start all over again, get frustrated, then it would get harder. It sounds like me when I began meditating. Yes, the same thing, yeah. Because meditation requires being present, and that's a skill. You've got to practice it. So I didn't have a teacher at the time. I was just going off my intuition, and it would take me three hours to go through the whole entire process just to complete it.

1:06:35and I'd start all over because I wanted it to be a complete model. So six and a half weeks of just a dark night of the soul because I think when we're traumatized or we're under stress, we tend to focus on what we don't want to have happen and what we do want to have happen. I think in survival, we're always preparing for the worst-case scenario. So it was a battle that I couldn't get my mind to do what I wanted to do. At the end of six and a half weeks, one day, I went through the whole entire thing without breaking my focus and I swear it was like hitting a golf ball right in the sweet spot.

1:07:08It just clicked, and I clicked. And from that moment on, my body started to heal. That's incredible. I started to have less pain. My neurological symptoms were diminishing. And the moment I started to correlate the changes that were happening in my body with what I was doing inside of me, I started doing it with more passion and more enthusiasm. Anyway, I was back on my feet in 9 1⁄2 weeks. I was back training again at 12 weeks. Come on. I was back in my practice and, you know, they told me that I would have to wear this body cast for a year, six months to a year. And, well, gosh, I put it on once and took it off and said, there's just no way I'm going to wear this.

1:07:50And so I just made a deal with myself. And the deal was, in those lonely nights where I couldn't sleep, if I'm ever able to walk again, I'll spend the rest of my life studying the mind-body connection and mind over matter. And pretty much that's what I've been doing. That's amazing. So that's the, see I'm a layman. So I start out introducing you as a peak performance person. I see everything through performance, I guess, right? But that's incredible because the sophisticated version is that you're this, you've studied this convergence of like neuroscience, quantum physics, epigenetics, sort of the convergence of that, right?

1:08:21What would you say you do? In other words, if someone said to you, because I know we talk a lot about healing, what would you say? Someone says, what do you do? What would your answer be to that? I get that question every day, every week when I'm on a plane. Someone sits next to me. They go, so what do you do? And then I wind up talking to them for four hours. I teach people really a way to live a better life and to heal themselves of past scars, to provide the tools for them to realize that they're more than they really perceive themselves to be. And I believe that your personality creates your personal reality.

1:08:59Can you elaborate on that? I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, so your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. So the present personality who's watching this show has created the present personal reality called their life. It means then if you want to change your life, your personal reality, that means fundamentally you have to change your personality. That means you have to start thinking about what you've been thinking about and change it. You have to begin to become aware of your unconscious habits and behaviors and modify them. Then you have to look at certain emotions that keep you anchored to the past and decide if those emotions belong in your future.

1:09:36And I think after all these years, Ed, I think that most people try to create a new personal reality as the same personality. It doesn't work. You know, you literally have to become someone else. So the process then, most people, they're thinking the same thoughts. They're making the same choices. They're demonstrating the same behaviors. They're creating the same experiences that stamp the same networks of neurons into the same patterns, all for the familiar feeling that they call themselves. And if you keep doing that over and over again, there's a principle in neuroscience that says that nerve cells that fire together wire together.

1:10:10So people begin to hardwire their brain into very finite signature into these automatic programs. Turns out by the time we're 35 years old, we become a set of memorized behaviors, emotional reactions, beliefs, perceptions, unconscious attitudes. that function just like a computer program. So when people want to change, they're using 5 % of their conscious mind and they can think positively all they want, but the programs are running subconsciously, telling them that they're negative. So the only way to do that then is to get into the operating system. And getting into the operating system of where those programs exist requires then people beginning to do some inward work.

1:10:51If you sit down and you disconnect from your outer world, You close your eyes, we play some music in the background, you sit your body down and not smelling anything or tasting anything or experiencing anything or feeling anything. And you're not thinking about or anticipating the future or remembering the familiar past. That moment, that elegant moment where you fall into the present moment is where the magic happens. And so after looking at enough brain scans in the process of studying the transformation, yeah, I call that getting beyond yourself. Because when you disconnect from your present personal reality and personality, now you're ready to create something else.

1:11:34And so what thoughts do you want to fire and wire in your brain? What behaviors do you want to demonstrate? and the act of rehearsing the behavior begins to install the neurological hardware in your brain, primes it to look like the experience has already happened. Yes, yep. Let's step back for a second. I want to stay on that. I want everyone to be with us. So a couple things you said, because you said a ton there, right? And so I want everybody to catch a couple things here. A basic thing, a base model is that people don't think about what they think about enough. In other words, just taking a second to think about what you actually think about is a breakthrough experience, It's just something that simple, right?

1:12:11And we have, you can correct me, but we have somewhere around 80 ,000 thoughts a day. Is that about right? And at some point, 70 % of them, I just want everybody to understand this, are the same thoughts on every - 90. 90 % of them. So 90 % of those thoughts are the same thoughts on a daily basis and we wonder why, if we really are what we think about, why our lives continue to sort of perpetuate themselves over and over again. You got it, you got it. And so we have these patterns. You've talked about beginning to consciously choose and decide what these thoughts and behaviors are that you would like.

1:12:40So is there a way specifically, maybe one technique you give today outside of some of the seminars and books that we're gonna talk about in a minute, but how do you break that pattern and how do you become conscious of getting new thoughts that serve you, that create that person that you wanna be? Look, it's really simple. Okay. Your brain is organized to reflect everything you know in your life. Your brain is a record of the past.

1:13:01Jim Kwik:It's an artifact of everything you've learned and experienced at this moment. Feelings and emotions are the end product of past experiences and we can remember experiences better because we remember how they feel. So most people wake up in the morning and they start remembering all their problems. And those problems are connected to certain people and certain things at certain times and places. The moment they start thinking about those problems, they're thinking in the past. Those problems have an emotion associated with them. And the moment they start feeling those emotions, the body is the unconscious mind doesn't know the difference between an experience that's creating an emotion, and the emotion the person's fabricating by thought alone.

1:13:38Now, thoughts are the language of the brain, and feelings are the language of the body. And how you think and how you feel creates your state of being. So most people's entire state of being, when they start their day, is already in the past. So you have a choice. The choice is you're either defined by a vision of the future, or you're defined by the memories of the past. and when you decide to say, okay, I'm going to change, and you decide one thing, I'm not going to eat this food, I'm going to wake up earlier, I'm going to do something aerobic, I'm not going to have sugar after 6 o 'clock, whatever it is, whatever choice a person makes, the moment you make a choice to do something differently, and the hardest part about change is not making the same choice as you did the day before, get ready, because it's going to feel uncomfortable.

1:14:29It's going to feel unfamiliar. There's going to be some uncertainty and unpredictability and that's the moment the game is on yes So then most people their their body has been conditioned emotionally to be the mind So now this sort of the body says wow I'd rather hang on to my guilt Then take a chance and possibility I'd rather live in fear yes, then trust in the unknown So so once the person feels uncomfortable the body goes whoa wait a second we're out of the program here and body starts influencing the mind that's right so it says start tomorrow you'll never change you don't have the money to do this you're not good enough your mother told you were this your father's fault it's your ex's fault you know all of the voices that come up now here's the deal if you respond to those voices those same thoughts as if they're true by the way they're always going on behind the scenes of your awareness but now they're amplified because you're outside your comfort zone.

1:15:26You believe in that thought. That thought's going to lead to the same choice, which is going to lead to the same behavior, which is going to create the same experience and produce the same emotion. And the person's going to say, this feels right. No, no, no. That feels familiar. Going from the old self to the new self is a neurological, it's a biological, it's a chemical, it's a hormonal, it's a genetic death of the old self. And people will say to me, in that void, in that unknown, I can't predict my future and I'll say to them the best way to predict your future is to create it not from the known but from the unknown love it so close your eyes now and think about that vision once you start thinking about that vision of your future you're activating the creative centers in your brain mm-hmm and naturally you begin to think about putting yourself in the scene yes and the act of doing that when you're truly passionate and truly present the moment Once you're defined by that vision, when the thought in your mind becomes the experience, you begin to feel the emotion of the event before it's made manifest.

1:16:30Now, you're giving your body a sampling, a taste of the future. And now, if a thought and a feeling create a new state of being, you're combining a clear intention with an elevated emotion, and now you're beginning to change your biology. And you're seeing a whole new landscape that you could never see before, because you're no longer viewing your future through the lens of the past. I love this. Now, this requires then something really specific because most people will wait for their wealth to feel abundance. They'll wait for their success to feel empowered. They'll wait for their new relationship to feel loved.

1:17:08They'll get all these things when. Yes. So think about that. The absence of getting those things causes people to live in lack their entire life. And so they're waiting for something outside of them to change how they feel inside of them. And if they're not creating a new life, then they're not applying the proper principles. Then they keep all their manifestations, all their dreams at arm's length. Think about this. If you get up feeling gratitude, if you get up feeling empowered, if you get up feeling whole, if you get up feeling unlimited, why would you worry about whether it was going to come or not?

1:17:43You would feel like it already happened. How do you do that when you are stepping into the know? If you give us one strategy, one thought, one technique that keeps us, is it just, for me, candidly, for me, it's just always been because you're explaining to me in a much more deep level things I've understood through my own experience, right? Everyone that's listening to this has had an experience where these formulas, these concepts, and these ideas have worked for you. They have. You've all had an experience like this. For me, it's just being conscious of it. For me, it's literally, for me, taking control of it and being conscious about it.

1:18:14How would you answer that? Well, I absolutely agree with you, Ed. You're absolutely right. We're wired to create. This isn't something that you have to try to do. Right. You just have to get beyond the memory of your past and all the associations to create a new future. Now, theoretically, that sounds really easily, but everybody's done it at least once in their life. What happened? You get a wild idea. You get a crazy idea, and you think, what would it be like to be happy? What would it be like to be in love? What would it be like to be rich? Whatever it is. Yes. And all of a sudden, you ask that question, and you turn on the creative center in your brain.

1:18:48That's right. It turns on. Yes. And now the frontal lobe is the boss. It's the CEO. It's the symphony leader. And the frontal lobe, as an executive, has connections to all other parts of the brain. Now, when you ask that question, it's got to answer it. So it's got to look out over the landscape and see, what kind of raw materials do I have? Well, you only have a few things, knowledge you've learned and experiences you've had. So it begins to call up different networks of neurons and it begins to seamlessly piece them together and you get a vision in your mind That's called intent. And if you're passionate you start to feel the feelings of when it happens now You're giving your body that energetic boost.

1:19:25Now Everybody's done this the moment you've said that no one can talk you out of it. No person. It's right. No thing no experience It's you're possessed by it. So then what happens next you start writing down all the choices you need to make, all the things you got to do, all the goals and experiences you want in your future. And every time you write one of those goals or experiences down, you start to feel more of those emotions. And now you're basically assembling more of your future. Now, the astute person does something really amazing. They start learning more information. You want to be wealthy?

1:19:57Study wealthy people. You want to be healthy? Study healthy people. As you begin to gain more knowledge, you're adding more stitches into the three-dimensional tapestry. and you got more raw materials to dream in new ways. Now, here's the part that is the most important. Take out a piece of paper and say, what thoughts do I have to stop thinking? You know, I can't, I'll start tomorrow, I'm too hard, I don't feel like it, I have a headache, I gotta go to sleep, I'm tired. List those thoughts and become so conscious of those thoughts that you would never let one of those thoughts slip by your awareness, unchecked by you.

1:20:32Can I say something about that? I wanna jump in on that. One of the powers of writing those thoughts down as you completely eliminate and weaken their influence over you. They become minimized when you write them. They lose their power over you when you grab control of them by writing them down. It's a significantly powerful exercise is to write down those thoughts. Yeah, from a neuroscientific standpoint, what's called metacognition, because the moment you can observe the thought and become conscious of it, you're no longer the program. You're consciousness observing the program, and you begin to literally objectify your subjective self, and now you're pulling out.

1:21:04So then write down the choices you have to stop making. Look at the things you have to stop doing. Do you complain? Do you make excuses? Do you blame other people? What do you do? List those things and be really honest with yourself. What experiences do you have to stay away from from certain people at certain times and places? Stay away from them so that you are not in the environment that triggers it. And now here's the most important point. Write down those emotions that keep you anchored to the past because those emotions are literally residue from the past chemically. So then the moment you start feeling suffering, the moment you start feeling guilt, the moment you start feeling unworthy, the moment you start feeling despair, the moment you start feeling any of those emotions, you're back in your past.

1:21:48Yes. And you can't see the future. You're thinking within those emotional states. And we've looked at enough brain stands to say that when you think within a certain emotion, you're going to make your brain worse. Thoughts are physical. What are thoughts when they happen in your body, the power of this? The stronger the emotion that you feel from any condition in your environment, the more you pay attention to the cause. So the higher the threshold of the emotion, the more the brain narrows its focus on whatever it is in the environment that does it. And the brain takes a snapshot, and that's called a memory.

1:22:22So now people think neurologically within the circuits of the past experience, and they feel chemically within the boundaries of those emotions. You say to the person, well, what happened? The person say, this person did this to me, that person did that, then this happened. And the latest research on memory says that 50 % of what you talk about in the past isn't even the truth. That you don't have the same brain then. So you make stuff up, which means now you're reliving a past that you didn't even have just to embellish it, to produce the emotions, to reaffirm your limited state. Very short intermission here, folks.

1:22:57I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. All right, welcome back to Max Out, everybody. What an honor it is to be with this gentleman here today and to share him with all of you. I guess probably the thing I admire most about him is that he came to this space, I think, similarly to how I did, which is that almost reluctantly, he was a person building businesses and becoming successful in the real world, applying the things he was learning from personal development. and making those things a reality in his life.

1:23:31And then after he had business success, being sought after enough, he decided to start to teach the things that had helped him become successful. And I love that there's a track record behind the incredible things we're going to cover today. Multiple time New York Times bestseller, a company called Neurogym that you're going to fall in love with everybody, a bunch of different books. There's a recent one I read in two days called Innercise. I highly recommend you all get this. Most of you are probably familiar from him for the first time, from The Secret. He's one of the stars, if not the star of The Secret.

1:24:02A bunch of different books, The Answer, so many great things. And it's an honor to have him today because I consider him on earth one of, if not the greatest expert on the brain, on the inner mechanics of the brain, mindset, and peak performance. So I know it's what all of you want to talk about. So I have John Assaraf here with me today. John, thanks for being here, brother. And it's so good to be here. And thank you for giving me the honor to be here with you. Talk to us about beliefs. How powerful are they? What are they? Why do they matter? So I'll start with the story first and then I'll share beliefs and then what to do.

1:24:39So we have some practical things that you can start doing today. So back in 1987, when I bought the franchising rights for Remax of Indiana, I had no idea how to build a company. I was 26 years old. and but I had another mentor who I invested$75 ,000 to become his partner to have the opportunity to learn from this man who at the time was worth probably$100 million and so I was very very keen on learning and I didn't know how to build a business I didn't know anything other than how to sell real estate and I set a goal to generate$1 billion a year in sales and I set the goal for five years in the future, not knowing a billion dollar goals, like mind boggling big for me.

1:25:28And I, there was an interview, um, the second week I was in Indianapolis, I moved from Toronto to Indianapolis for this opportunity. And, um, I was interviewed by the Indianapolis business journal. And I said, uh, in the interview, that was a goal for a billion dollars. And the reporter said, are you aware that there's two companies that have been in the state of Indiana for 80 years, 100 years, the other one, and they haven't hit a billion dollars in real estate sales in all of these years. And I said, yeah, I know it's Graves and Tucker. And you can let them know that I'll be the first. And as I said that, I almost felt like I put my foot right in my mouth because I didn't know how I was going to do it.

1:26:05Long story short, five years later, we sold enough franchise, recruit enough agents. We did$1.2 billion. And we were stuck, which is a great place to be stuck. And I was asking myself, how is it possible that I'm training these agents with strategies, with tactics, with selling skills, marketing skills? We were like the gurus of, here's the books, here's the cassettes, here's the trainers, here's like out of the deep end. And the agents who, for example, would make$30 ,000 a year, kept making$30 ,000 a year. The agents who made$50 ,000 kept making$50 ,000. The agents who made$100 ,000 kept making$100 ,000.

1:26:40And so I realized that they weren't missing the skills or the knowledge. There was something else at play. And what helped me from the age of 19 to 27, 28, 30, was every single day, and I still do it today, and I'll share this with you in just a little bit. every single day. I was priming my brain with the beliefs and the self-image required to achieve the goals that I wanted. So I got 75 agents together who agreed to pay$3 ,000 each to be part of an inner game training. Forget the outer game, the inner game training. We worked on affirmations, visualization, mindfulness, meditation, listening to our affirmations on our vision, on our cassette recorders.

1:27:29We had little cassettes we put in our cars. And so I had them work on their self-image and self-worth and self-esteem and to develop the beliefs that we were going to imprint or impregnate into their subconscious mind by listening to these audios every single day, twice a day while they were driving. And those 75 agents over six months increased sales by$100 million. dollars my gosh we didn't teach them one thing about selling more we taught them about changing their identity and their belief structure so that it matched the goals they wanted to achieve and then i said holy shit this works even for other people not just me so we started to teach that to all of our agents and we created these cassettes with these recordings on them of the beliefs that we needed them to to believe the self-image that they deserved that they were good enough they were smart enough and we went from 1.2 billion to four and a half billion a year wow within four years wow and that's my beliefs and so guys that's a little bit of beliefs and believing in a new self-image and identity in a new story gosh so good you're going to tell us about beliefs what they are so if you think yeah so so when you were born were you born with any beliefs though were you born with any habits no were you born with any fears no no so from a neuroscience and neuropsychology perspective a belief is nothing more than this imagine that you're born and your brains made up of a hundred billion marbles and every time you have an experience or somebody says something to you read something or you watch something these marbles make these connections and the connections that are reinforced go from conscious connections to subconscious connections.

1:29:18And once these subconscious connections are made and reinforced, they run the show 98 % of the time. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern in the brain. And our conscious brain can choose what we want when we're in that part of our brain, but our subconscious mind can't choose. It's programmed from the age of zero to three in the imprinting years, three to about seven or eight, the modeling years, and then eight on, it's the experiential years. And so if you have these powerful beliefs that you're good enough, you're smart enough, you're worthy to achieve the goals that you have.

1:29:55If you have these powerful beliefs, you are able to achieve any amount of income you choose, no matter what the amount is, you just need to learn how. So if you have these empowering beliefs, you have brain coherence between conscious and subconscious. What if you said, okay, I want to make, let's just say$100 ,000 a year or a million. It doesn't make a difference. And I asked you, what do you need to believe about yourself to achieve this? So I need to believe I'm smart enough. Good. Write down, I am smart enough. What else do you need to believe? I need to believe that I am worthy. I need to believe that I deserve this.

1:30:30I need to believe that it's possible. I need to believe you write down five or six or seven beliefs. They're just words on a sheet of paper. Now, let me stop for just a moment. I'm going to tell a story and come back to this. I want you to imagine that somebody tapped you on the shoulder sometime today and say, hey, I work with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks in Hollywood, and we have this new script, okay, that if you get really good at this script where you could read it in front of the camera without the script will pay you 10 million bucks. Now, I want you to imagine you've never seen the script.

1:31:05You don't know how to act, but they said to you, we're going to give you an acting coach. We're going to give you everything you need to memorize the script. We'll give you everything you need to act it perfectly. What would you do to take that script that's on a piece of paper that you've never seen before? What would you do to take that script to make it yours for you to own it? And the answer is you probably read it like what once? Would you read it maybe 100 times, 200 times, 500 times? You think you might role play with somebody while you're holding the script in your hand? Do you think you might research the role?

1:31:39Do you think you might take a camera and practice it? And do you think that if you practice it one time, 50 times, 100 times, 500 times, you can finally put the script down and you can get in front of the camera and go, boom, here is the script. Do you think you could do that? Well, guess what? A script it's on a piece of paper that you don't believe with practice, you start to believe. So what happens if you take a belief system, and you start to imprint it into your subconscious mind, initially through conscious repetition, but there are ways to access the subconscious mind that we know today that are faster and easier than just doing it consciously.

1:32:16And so you take a vision of you achieving your goals and dreams, you take the beliefs you need, you learn how to manage your emotions a little bit better. And then you develop the habits, which again, are nothing more than neural patterns in the brain that have been reinforced. And when you learn how to deactivate the destructive ones and activate constructive ones through space repetition and reinforcement, now you are resetting your default way of being. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern that if you learn how to deactivate it and create a new one it's like a software upgrade for your brain wow so guys what he didn't say so good john thank you guys this is stuff that you pay thousands of dollars for but you by the way can get in his book and you get here because i know him for free um but guys what he didn't say his beliefs are necessarily true no thank you You're a person of truth.

1:33:13And this is important. You know, I've told you many times, everybody, that your thoughts aren't necessarily true. Your beliefs are not necessarily true. They're patterns reinforced over time. And so if you could create this new script that's reinforced these patterns over time, that's a conscious way of doing it. Give us one key. He said, we know now there's subconscious ways to do it that are faster and more powerful. Give us one that is a new hack to do this. So one that everybody's heard of and very few people do, unless you're a professional athlete, astronaut, or Navy SEAL, is visualization.

1:33:44Yes, thank you. Simple, simple, simple. I know you had Phil Mickelson on in the past, and I watched him. And if you think about visualization is simulation. Now, here is the difference. Whoa, that's good. Okay, go ahead. So visualization is simulation. So when we close our eyes, or even if our eyes are open, and we start to use our Einstein brain, the imagination, we now have just activated one of the biggest centers of our brain the occipital lobe that's connected to the motor cortex it's connected to the motivational circuit the nucleus comes that releases that dopamine that makes you feel good that makes you want to take action so if you visualize yourself achieving the goal if you visualize yourself behaving in ways that match the new belief if you even visualize the words or you take the words on a sheet of paper and you read them, run your right finger across it, run your left finger across it, close your eyes, see it and feel it, your brain is creating a mental movie with the words.

1:34:50And as it creates a mental movie with the words, that's happening in your subconscious mind. And when you give the subconscious these instructions, a couple things happen because of the way the brain hierarchy works. Number one is survival, but then number two is safety. And then number three is energy conservation. Now, when you do something 20, 30, 40, 50 times, it takes about 66 days to 365 days of repetition to override an old habitual circuit. Not 10 days, not 21 days, 66 to 365. 65. So if you visualize yourself achieving the goal, feeling the success that you want to feel, seeing the belief on the screen of your mind, you are actually creating a neural network through the science of neuroplasticity.

1:35:40And the networks that you reinforce become the most dominant networks. And since your brain wants to conserve energy, if you do this on a consistent basis, Your brain says, okay, you're doing this so often. Let me just make this automatic. Let me set aside the old beliefs. Let me replace it with the new beliefs. And now you've deliberately and consciously evolved yourself. Oh, my gosh. So, guys, it's patterns. John, thank you. John used a word earlier, which was coherence, and it can fly by. But when you've done this hard work, and I say fun work, by the way, on your subconscious brain, on your subconscious mind, what happens is now when you set that ambitious goal, there's a coherence between what's lying underneath you and what's on the surface.

1:36:23And that's why you know people, you all have someone you know that when they point their mind at something, it's almost like a weapon. When they point themselves at a dream, they draw it towards them. Part of that's energy, part of that's vibration, but a big part of that is coherence in your brain. And so you've got to do this difficult work that you might think is difficult, which by the way is fun, is easy, and it's really just a matter of patterns and taking control of your life, taking control of the things you do. You can literally, everybody, change your life. You can change the external parts of your life by changing the internal or the inner sizes that he teaches part of your life.

1:37:02That's why I do this show. That's what we're going to talk about. Can I just piggyback on something? Please. Since you picked up on the word coherence, appearance and you mentioned the law of attraction earlier for the people who think that the law of attraction is um you know think believe and you'll achieve first i'm going to tell you that's bullshit so let's call it bullshit um but i want you to think of your brain just a little bit differently and think of it this way let's say you love rock and roll and let's say rock and roll's on station 95.5. If you're on station 92.1, that might be classical.

1:37:40If you're on station 98.7, that might be punk rock. But a 92.5, that's rock and roll. So imagine coherence just means locking your electromagnetic spectrum of your brain. Lock it and load it on exactly what you want. So what's the vision? What's the goal? What are the beliefs? What are the emotions that create coherence so you're locked and loaded to the frequency of the universe that is matching that goal part one part two is when you get locked and loaded you've actually activated the einstein brain connected to the motor cortex connected to the dopamine release in your body and when that happens okay now you're in coherence but there's another part that happens in this einstein part of the brain That's actually what the latest neuroscientists and psychologists are thinking is connected to this GPS part of our brain, to the frequency of where all of the tools, resources, people are that resonate with that frequency.

1:38:46so we've been evolving for what two and a half million years since homo erectus to now 108 billion humans on earth with a brain that's been changing and growing and my belief is we're just scratching the proverbial surface when we talk about you know little quantum mechanics or quantum physics with entanglement how we're all connected we're all tuning into the frequencies that are us and within us and all around us. Now, when we learn to use our brain better, it's just mind-boggling how we can achieve goals and dreams that we thought were impossible to achieve before. This is the fun part now.

1:39:24That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. All right, welcome back to Max Out, everybody. I'm so excited to have this guest here today. By the way, she's made a huge sacrifice. At the time we're recording this, there's a storm where she lives in Texas. Snow's rolled in. There's no power. She went and got a hotel room so that we could do this today. So if you see the background, that's where she is. And you wouldn't know it from the background, but this is one of the most remarkable people I've ever talked to in my life.

1:39:57I had the great honor of being on her show. She's a cognitive neuroscientist, which just even saying those things is a miracle that I can get that out of my mouth, nevermind understand what it is. she's one of the most brilliant people you're ever going to meet in your life she's a best-selling author she's got a phd in communication pathology she's brilliant and you're going to write a bunch of notes today i mean like a bunch of notes so dr caroline leaf thank you for being here and making the sacrifice to be here today oh it i wouldn't have missed this thank you so much for that lovely introduction and and i just absolutely love talking to you we had the most amazing talk on when you when i interviewed you and i think you're incredible as well so thank you You teach like, I think you call it like five steps to mind management.

1:40:39Yes, the neuro cycle. So give us a quick, what's the difference between brain and mind? And what are these five steps to managing our mind? Maybe you just listed a few of them there, but I like lists. So I'm just wondering what those are. Well, first of all, the five steps we call the neuro cycle. I call it the neuro cycle. So with your mind, you're cycling through your brain. You're directing the neuroplasticity, which is really nice to know. You can actually direct changes in your brain. So my whole premise is that if you are always, your mind is always working and it's always changing the brain and it's always happening, can we direct that process?

1:41:12So for three, almost four decades now, I've been researching that. And the answer is yes. And that's what's in the book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. So if you add the neuro cycle to your lifestyle, and it's a lifestyle, you actually will literally improve your ability to manage your mind by 81 % and more, which is phenomenal because it means that you influence cellular health through the telomeres, which we can unpack as well. You can reduce inflammation, you can improve your immune function, your cardiovascular function, neurological, kidney, everything about your body will respond to mind management because your mind basically is driving all those functions anyway.

1:41:50Your gut health, your gut-brain interaction, all of it isn't happening if you're dead, your brain and body are dead. So what's keeping, what's the difference between a dead person and an alive person? Mind. So if mind is messy, brain and body are messy. If mind is cleaned up and it's a process because we're all going to be messy because we have free will. And part of getting a mind sorted out, part of mind management is dealing with a mental mess. It's accepting I'm going to make bad decisions. I'm going to get into arguments. I am going to make, you know, misunderstand people. I am going to have acute traumas and toxic traumas and imposter syndrome and people pleasing and all this stuff all of us go through in different ways.

1:42:30So I'm going to have that and it's okay. But how am I going to manage it? So for me personally, what's happened over the years is that I still go through these things, but the difference is I'm 81 % more efficient in identifying and managing. So instead of something that could throw me years ago for days and affect my work and everything, I can deal with it within seconds and minutes and get back on track. So that's one part of the answer. So before I go to mind brain, do you want to ask anything or unpack anything with what I said? No. Are there specifically five things like it are going to sequence?

1:43:04Yes, it's a sequence. So before I tell the sequence, let me tell you mind brain because it will make so much more sense. Okay. Because I've alluded to it a lot. So your mind is separate from your brain, but inseparable. So what is the brain? The brain and mind are not the same thing. And the brain and body collectively are made of 37 to 100 trillion cells. And your mind is, and then those 37 to 100 trillion cells arrange themselves into this incredible, the brain and the heart and the lungs, et cetera. And your mind is what actually is the external force that keeps them going, the blood flowing, the chemicals, electricity, electromagnetics, all of that, which is phenomenal.

1:43:42So that's why if our mind's not managed, the body and the brain will be a mess. And so, and that goes down to even like if you are eating, if you're eating, maybe eating a farm to table, wonderful diet, et cetera, but you're not dealing with your anxiety or you're not, you're trying to stuff it down, or you're not dealing with that bad habit or that toxic trauma, you will lose up to 80 % of the nutrition because your mind has affected the ability of the digestive system to actually digest and get to assimilate the nutrients. And sometimes it's kind of messy and sometimes it's great. And we all, if we're human, we are going to experience messes and there's no shame in that.

1:44:16The sooner we get rid of the shame and guilt and condemnation around being messy. And the sooner we as leaders talk about the mind more authentically, the more we give people that follow us a permission to talk about mind. Only 3 % of leaders are talking about mind, which is terrible. So that's creating the stigma that they're pretending they'd be perfect. And that's why we see people that seem to be perfect in their lives and they're committing suicide. Meanwhile, it's because we've got this philosophy in this day and age of not being open and seeing issues of the mind as helpful messengers of an underlying issue.

1:44:50The neurocycle then is this five-step. It is how you manage your mind moment by moment. So it's a lifestyle. So the neuro cycle is what you do when you're awake and conscious, and it then automatically prepares you for sleep because sleep is fixing up your brain. So your mind is always with you. So your mind always needs to be managed. And so an analogy, and then I'll dive into the five steps. You can go three weeks without food. You can go three days without water. You can go three minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go three seconds without using your mind. So you're always thinking, feeling, and choosing.

1:45:25Yeah. So it's gather awareness. Second step is to reflect. Third step is to write. Fourth step is to recheck. And the fifth step is an active reach. So each of those, they're so profound. They do the most phenomenal stuff in your brain. And the first half of the book where I talk about the mental health system and I talk about my clinical trials, I do explain what each of those steps are doing. So the first thing is to gather awareness. Gather awareness. And I've chosen words very carefully. If you think of a big fat apple tree and you're apple picking, and this apple tree is so full that you actually can't, like you just go up and you just nudge it and the apples are just falling on your head.

1:46:03That's how we often feel when our mind's a mess. Everything's just falling on our head and it's just too much. So what you can do with a neuropsycho is when you feel that situation coming on, remove yourself from the tree and stand back and watch the tree. and gather awareness of all of that. Don't be scared of it. Don't run away from the apple tree. Just stand back and observe the apple tree. Observe what's going on there.

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