[Robyn Benson, Founder of The Self-Care Revolution and Santa Fe Soul, interviews Jim Kwik, CEO of Kwik Learning & Co-Founder of SuperheroYou here in this session called Unleash Your Brain Power]
Robyn Benson: Hello everyone. And welcome to Month Four of Self-Care Revolution. I am Robyn Benson. I’m a Doctor of Oriental Medicine and also the founder of Santa Fe Soul Health & Healing Center.
Kevin Snow: And I’m Kevin Snow, an Intuitive Counselor and The Desert Shaman. And I also work here in Santa Fe Soul in beautiful Santa Fe.
Robyn Benson: So here we are in Month Four as I mentioned Unleashing Your Brain Power. This is – as you can see, we started out last week with Michael Gelb and Dr. Tom O’Brien. And we’re so excited to introduce to you today Jim Kwik. But before that I know we have a ton of people online right now and many of you this might be your first time to the Self-Care Revolution.
And just to give you a little bit of background. This is a 12-month series and each month is – we have a specific theme like we started out with Thoughts and Food as Medicine. And so we are going right into the next month. It’s all going to be about earthing and electro-sanitizing your life. And our big mission with the Self-Care Revolution is to help people to be aware and be active at this time to be very exciting but it’s a time more than ever where we have to make self-care a priority.
So through the Self-Care Revolution, our desire and our mission is to help save millions of lives, to help people not only prevent the disease from happening but to reverse diseases that are already being set up in our bodies. And just to have that knowing that we each have the choice every single day to stay healthy and to be healthy and to live this vision and mission of our life each and every day. Maybe you want to add to that?
Kevin Snow: Yes, and we’ve got this amazing live event coming up which is – this one into later June 21st and it’s called Self-Care Bliss. We’ve got a lot of the speakers that we’ve had on already and are coming together in live –
Robyn Benson: We’ve got Norm Shealy, Bob Doyle…
Kevin Snow: Yeah, oh my God!
Robyn Benson: Larry Dossey…
Kevin Snow: It’s a party.
Robyn Benson: And we’d love to — our speaker here Jim Kwik, how are you? Thank you for being here, Jim.
Jim Kwik: I am doing fantastic. Thank you, both. That was any better. I love the energy here. That was any better my name with the Dr. Robyn Benson.
Robyn Benson: You are so sweet. So Jim Kwik, I am so fortunate that I met you a couple of months ago and I was telling – I mentioned the Self-Care Revolution. I just want to say thank you for saying yes, because I know you are a busy man. You mentioned last year you travel 190 days, you’re all over the world and here you are with us because I sense — certainly there is commonality with this being my pleasure.
And so for all of you who are with us, Jim Kwik, the CEO of Kwik Learning has taught speed reading, memory improvement and accelerated learning for two decades. His clients include Marriot, Virgin, Nike, Fox, Zappos, Singularity and Harvard University, just to name a few. His work is featured in the New York Times Best Selling Book “Unleash Your Brain To Change Your Age”. Jim’s trainings are used in over 80 countries. He is the founder of SuperheroYou Brainpower Conference which is coming up once again in October.
So here you are. Thank you so much once again.
Kevin Snow: Welcome.
Jim Kwik: Thank you so much both of you, Robyn and Kevin. And I want to also thank everyone who is listening to this. I know your time is incredibly valuable and I respect you. I respect you for showing up and being part of the solution and being part of this movement. And it’s so exciting time, such an exciting time and this is one of my favorite subject and never get to talk about this really but just self-care. So thank you for creating this platform for everyone to be able to benefit from.
Robyn Benson: Thank you, Jim.
Kevin Snow: It is a revolution, kind of like your revolutionary learning technique.
Jim Kwik: There is a revolution. There is an evolution. And I’d say, I really think that everyone as you’re listening to this I encourage you to notes. And I hope everyone is just finding your passion, I think we can only be truly happy when you are living your soul’s purpose. And the thing is, the challenge is as we’re now living in this fast-paced world where information is flying us from every direction and we’re multi-tasking. And there’s just — lot of people think that there’s not enough time and sometimes I notice a lot of people because they’re very self-less and they’re here to serve, they are going out there and they’re being a hero to their job and to their family and to their friends and to the people, everyone else but sometimes not themselves.
Sometimes I notice even some of the people that we attract in our tribe and our community, our student, sometimes they are out there helping everybody and they are putting themselves less. And it’s really hard to be able to give somebody something that you don’t have yourself. And so I am really excited about this call, this conversation and what you’re putting together, so.
Kevin Snow: Thank you. Yeah, we have mentioned before we got on the call that you just – your really – your mission here is to pack as much as possible. Without, of course, overloading people, right, or at least teaching them how to handle that –
Jim Kwik: I hope so. We’ll totally do that.
Kevin Snow: Thanks.
Jim Kwik: Yeah, so I want to be able to serve people who are listening, so I encourage people to take notes and I think one of the best ways – just a quick recommendation is lot of times people are listening to a call, or go to a seminar and they learn something really good. So what will happen is they’ll forget it. Just like there is a learning curve, there is also a forgetting curve. And so within – if you’ve ever gone to a seminar or an event and you listen to a call and you learned some really good stuff but usually what happens after a day or so, up to 90% of that information could be gone. One of the best ways to get hold of that information is by taking notes. So I encourage people to take notes, and I encourage people to either do a whole brain note taking process, if you are familiar with mind mapping from Tony Buzan, or a very simple thing you could do as you are listening to this as we go through these strategies, and I teach you strategies to able to read faster to overcome overload, teach you strategies to be able to improve your focus, to be able to improve your memory even.
And I know that’s a subject that a lot of people are very interested in, maybe senior moments are coming a little bit early or your memory lapses, a little bit absent minded, can’t remember where you put your phone or your wallet or your purse, or your keys, or if not your keys something larger like your car. People can’t remember where they parked the car, they’re kind of wondering in the parking lot. And so we’ll talk about memory tips but what you can do is with a piece of paper and I like taking notes. It’s kind of most people are used to typing. I think there is something magical that happens when you hand write something. But I would take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle and on the left side I put capture — capture right on top. And on the right side I put create. So two tips, on the left side, capture, on the right side, create. And on the left side is where I am taking notes.
So if you hear something that’s just a hobby like tip, a strategy, a process, write that down, capture it on the left side. On the right side, though it’s a little bit more right brain if you will is where you’re creating notes. You’re not capturing, you’re actually creating. So it’s like how do you feel about what you just captured? What questions do you have? How are you going to use this? Things like that, and those are your kind of your right brain, kind of creates creativity notes there, and I think that’s a wonderful way to be able to – when you’re done have it on one-page just like we’ll have the keywords and you can kind of go through and you definitely get the recordings of these calls and then also one page summary of your own notes. So where would you like to start?
Kevin Snow: Well, maybe one of the things that we ask all of our experts that we talk to is just touch on your self-care arrangement and key points on health?
Robyn Benson: First, of the travel that you do around the world – this is a big question for you I am sure.
Jim Kwik: It is. I mean, for what I do and a lot of the work I do is on stage, or in front of companies and I just have to be on and have that energy, that vitality, that mindfulness, that focus and so the self-care is extremely important for this, because what I like about when you’re talking about self-care, I am thinking about personal health maintenance and optimization. But I like it because responsibility is on us. I had the opportunity recently to introduce two of my heroes recently, Stan Lee who created Spider-Man and X-Men and Avengers and I got to introduce him to Richard Branson at a dinner. And so I go and pick up Stan, my wife and I picked up Stan Lee and he’s a wonderful – he just turned 90 years old. And he had two passions in his life. He goes to work still at 90 years old 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, and he just creates stories because that’s he loves the process of storytelling.
And the other passion he has is for his wife who is 91 years old. And there is – the two of them are so – they’re so lively and I think they – I can speak for them but I think a lot of it has to do with how they engaged they are with life. But the reason I bring this up is while we are in the car, we’re in LA, a simple 10-minute drive to dinner and they’re taking an hour with traffic and I was talking to them about all that he’s created, it is for me a living Disney and with all these wonderful characters and universes and I asked him a question and he answered – what the response was this great quote that he created for Spider-Man, saying “With great power comes great responsibilities”. Right, people and power that have – are in position of the power they have responsibility to steward it and just steward it well. And I said that’s interesting and I looked at him in that moment of inspiration and I said, “The opposite is also true. Not only with great power comes great responsibility but with great responsibility comes great power.”
We take responsibility for our lives, for our business, for our work, for our family, for our health and we have the power – we have great power to be able to influence and impact of the things that we want to. And so that’s why I like the whole theme. For me I have certain habits and rituals that we could go through during this call to optimize my health and also a lot having to do with my body but then also my brain and also because those two things are very obviously intimately connected together with our mind. And so a few things that I do – and I actually teach people – I’ll give you like maybe 10 tips over the course the call but then I’ll also teach you how to memorize all 10. How about that? We can make it a very, very practical like that, because I – there is a back story for this is when people see me on stage and they see me memorized in a room full of people, mean well I have 50 or 100 people stand up, I’ll memorize their name right from stage or they pass around the microphone and give me 100 random words or 50 or 100 digit number and most people struggle to memorize their seven-digit phone number and I’ll memorize like 10 seven-digit numbers. I tell people I don’t do this to impress you. I do this to express to you what’s really possible. And there’s no such thing as a good or bad memory. There is just a trained memory and untrained memory. And this is an important —
Robyn Benson: That’s profound.
Jim Kwik: Sure, sure. I would say this that if you are listening to this you want to have a better memory which is… who doesn’t want to improve their ability to remember things. I would say that, that regardless of your age and your background, your level of education, your diet, your financial situation, whatever there is no such thing as a good or bad memory. There’s just a trained memory and untrained memory. And the reason why I say this is I like to talk about all the works that I do. I always talk about beliefs because I believe that all behavior is belief-driven. All behavior is belief-driven that if you want to create a brand new result in your life, a brand new result, let’s say, a stellar health, or more money or wonderful relationships, whatever your goals and aspirations are you need to be able to do things. You need to be able to behave. But in order for us to behave and take on the new habit or new action, we need beliefs that support those behaviors. So all behavior is belief-driven.
And so the beliefs that I have for this is that all – that everyone has genius inside of them. There is no such thing as a good or bad memory. There’s the trained memory and we’re not taught that because what class taught you how to remember. I thought that it’s really interesting growing up in school that this old model and the school whether it’s 10 years or 20 years or 50 years or 300 years, our ability to – our learning ability happens to increase dramatically in in terms of how people are taught. We read the same way, we study, we remember the same way. But the world is dramatically different, not even just the past 300 years, just the past 10 years, or five years. And so I thought it was interesting that school taught us what to learn, Math, History, Science, Spanish but there weren’t a lot of classes on how to learn those subjects. Not a lot of classes on how to think or how to focus, how to listen, how to be creative, how to solve problems, how to read faster, how do remember things. And if I believe in the message that we live in, knowledge is power, then I believe that learning is a superpower.
When I had this whole theme around – again if knowledge is power, then learning is a superpower. And you could tweet that too. I believe a lot of learning is also social, it’s not solo. The old model of sit quietly in your chair, don’t talk to your neighbor, just repeat what I say and taking notes. I think that’s over. And that’s solo but today the classroom doesn’t have four walls. Like we’re demonstrating right now on this call – if you don’t talk to your neighbor, nowadays you are in trouble, right? It’s not based on consumption, it’s based on creation and co-creation, and that’s where really learning of the 21st century is, it’s not even just left brain learning, whether it’s like math and words. You know how it’s right brain works creativity, it’s music, it’s emotion, it’s experience but I won’t even say it’s just right brain, I would say it’s whole brain, or today it’s one level above that, not just your left brain and your right brain or even your three brains, your total triune brain, reptilian brain everything, I would say it’s a whole self-learning.
Right, when we’re talking about self-care imagine whole self-learning whether it’s your left brain, right brain, your three parts of your brain, your conscious or unconscious, your non-conscious, your brain and your body, it’s your multiple intelligences or different learning styles and your sensory integration, I mean there is so much to it. I don’t believe that there’s a magic pill, but I do believe that there is a magic process. And then throughout the call like these you’re getting a little bit – you’re getting another perspective, another piece of a puzzle. And so for me the reason why I’m passionate about this is I was telling you that even if you see me on stage my inspiration really was my desperation, because I wasn’t always able to do this, and growing up in school, I was actually in a lot of ways very learning challenged. And people don’t know this about me but I struggled a lot throughout school, throughout grade school, throughout junior high, throughout high school and I would always have to work harder than everybody else to get worse results. And I remember when I was five years old I had this really bad head injury and from that point on I always thought that maybe I was broken that there was something wrong with me. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t focus, like I could never finish a book or I didn’t understand things like my friends understood things.
And so I struggled in school and when I am looking to relate with this but so much of our identity sometimes – who doesn’t and also because the school, the education system, and I love teachers and I get to work – I am very honored to be able to share with lots of educators and teachers and I come from a family, my mother is a school teacher. My aunt is a school teacher. And the challenge is the system, and they say that if Rip van Winkle woke up today from his 100 years of slumber and the only thing he would recognize is the school system. Because it hasn’t been changed then, because right now it’s kind of like the assembly line, one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter approach to learning it doesn’t cut it anymore. So if you ever struggled in school, maybe it wasn’t your fault, because you weren’t taught how to do that. And I wasn’t taught and so when I got to college I wanted to start fresh and I took on all these classes and it got even worse. And I was interested in health because I lost my some family members and grandparents at an early age. And so I took all the science classes and I just even – it did worse and weeks without eating, weeks without sleeping, what would that do to your care, your health and I ended up at a library where I spent most of my time and I passed out of exhaustion. I literally – I fell down on a flight of stairs and I woke up two days later in a hospital, two full days later, hooked up with all these IVs and I thought I would die and I was down to 117 pounds. I mean I was not in great shape, and I just woke up thinking there has to be a better way. And just at that moment when a nurse just came in with a mug and on the mug had a picture, a hand drawing of Albert Einstein, pretty smart individual, a great superhero on his own right. And he had this quote that said, “The same level of thinking that’s created the problem won’t solve the problem”. And I was like wow!
And I mean ask a new question, how do we learn? How does our brain work so we could work our brain? They tell us that our brain is a supercomputer and we only use about five or 10 or whatever small percentage of it and – but how do we the use most of it? And I thought it was interesting that your brain that you could buy any device, you could buy a blender and come — or a DVD player, Blu-ray player and it all comes with an owner’s manual, an instruction manual. But your brain doesn’t and everything operates from your brain. And so I’ve spent the past 20 years trying to put together that owner’s manual in a way that’s simple and fun and easy and people can do remarkable things. And so for me that’s where I felt like I was almost dying and that’s where my passions came for self-care. And why I became so interested in that subject – the thing called health.
Kevin Snow: That’s an excellent story and I do think that you are right a lot of people can identify with that. And that’s we’re touching into here is these – and now basically you are superhero, you’ve created that identity that we are looking to –
Robyn Benson: Can you tell me each of those – of our own superhero?
Kevin Snow: So you met your challenges?
Jim Kwik: Well, that’s what happened, right? Once your claim your power you can help it, you want to help other people and I think a lot of the biggest solutions came from people who struggled the most in certain subjects and learning was my mine. And after I started studying everything I could get my hands on, the adult learning theory and neuroscience and brain science and making it very practical and I would start to – start looking for clues, anyone who could do something amazing. I remember I was eight years old early on I was at a stammer (ph) union and 25 of us were at a restaurant and a busy Saturday night and a waitress comes and starts taking everyone’s order and I didn’t really pay attention and so she came to me and I was half-way through on the table and she take my order and I noticed something funny, she wasn’t writing down. Have you ever had a waiter or waitress like that who just can memorize your order and at that time I am eight years old, I am very skeptical and even to this day I am skeptical, meaning I just want to know what the truth is.
And then so I’m thinking there’s no way she’s going to get this right, we’re going to have the standard plates back, we’re going to have the tray plates at each other, because there’s a busy, look how was different table she had, but when she came back she got every single thing perfect. I mean the beverages, the salad dressing, the appetizers, how we wanted the meal cooked, the desserts and that’s a stand-out skill. And she was in fact — she shook up a limiting belief that I didn’t realize I had. She was my Roger Bannister. You know back in 1954 ran a four-minute mile and that broke the four-minute mile and all of a sudden all these other people started breaking this four-minute mile because he shook up that belief that we always talk about.
And so what I wanted to do is right now I like to give everybody some memory tips and some pretty things that I use for self-care and I talk kind of rapidly, so take quick notes and write them down, and I’ll teach how to memorize them. And I always use acronym because I think they’re the easier to remember. Like we remember like the seven colors of rainbow because of VIBGYOR, right, red, yellow, green, blue and you compile it or homes in search for the Great Lakes. I want you to remember first of all 3 keys to a better memory is MOM. And I am going to go through really fast. The first M stands for motivation. Okay. If you want a better memory you have to find out what your drive is. And the question I would ask people is what’s in it for you? There is a radio station actually everyone listens to it WIIFM. WIIFM, what’s in it for me? And that’s everyone’s favorite subject.
But here is the thing with your memory is you only remember things that you feel, right? Things that you can see, things that you could feel, control all your senses and if I ask somebody questions like for example, how good they are with remembering names, most people would say they have trouble remembering people’s names. But I would say that it’s not completely true that you remember some names and some of those names are names you are motivated to remember. So for example, if somebody is struggling for remembering someone’s name, and I’d say I have a suitcase here of $10,000 cash for you or your favorite charity if you just remember the name of the next person you meet. How many people are going to remember that person’s name for $10,000? Most people, right because they are motivated. So why do you want to remember the person’s name? Maybe you want to show the person respect, or you want to create new business or you want to practice these techniques that you learned on, on the Self-Care Revolution and such. So first is motivation.
The “O” is observation. And this is so important because so many people blame their memory. They think it’s a retention issue when it’s really an attention issue. Right, as if they have big names, a lot of people aren’t forgetting the name, they’re just not hearing the name to begin with. So there is a difference between looking at something and really seeing it. Like for example, if you’re at home I want you to just draw a circle. Sketch out a circle and draw the back of a dime. What does the back of a dime look like? And I know you have many people from other countries listening to this. Whatever the currency is for you, what does the back of that currency look like? And for most people they still have an empty circle because there is a difference between looking at it and seeing it just like if I ask you, we all use this site called Google. But are you willing to bet what colors the letters of those – those six letters are? What color is first G? What color is the first O? What color is the second O? What color is the second G? What color is the L? And what color is the E? And how many times do we use that a day? But there is a difference and so the O stands for observation. Paying attention and being present.
Recently I had a pleasure of spending some time with President Clinton — Bill Clinton and all the stories I heard about him is that he’s had an incredible memory. So what I want to talk to him about is memory technique he used to remember names because I know a number of people that have met him on multiple occasions and they remember exactly who he is after one meeting. And that person is by name and I think remembering names is a stand-out skill. I think leaders are readers. And as I talk about some speed reading and I also think that to show you care at the highest level, you need to remember that person, because it’s again really hard to show someone you care about them, you just need to remember – care enough to remember their name.
And so just a couple of weeks ago and I am with President Clinton, and I asked him the magic question, how can you remember all these people’s names? And are you using memory techniques or anything like this (inaudible)? He only said, “Jim, I don’t”. And I noticed he used my name right away. I felt like I had a name (inaudible) right? I don’t and he says “What – when this is the thing with Clinton is he not only has an incredible charisma and a wonderful communicator, he’s an incredible connector regardless of how you feel about politics, right, incredible connector. And I found out that really the art of memory for him because this is a gentleman who has incredibly powerful presence but when he is with you, he is powerfully present. You know what I mean? Powerfully present.
And there is certainly a lot of other people there in the room outside waiting for him in a place like that but he was right there and the conversation seemed to last forever, because it felt like he wasn’t looking over my shoulder. He was completely – he was really asking really thoughtful questions and really listening to my answers, for the work we did and such and I think that powerful present, being in the moment, completely observant and we talked about the power of now. You’re not talking – most people when they are listening to somebody, they’re having conversations with themselves, in their own mind, how do you know this person or what is his name? And there is two conversations going on, one with the new stranger, one with yourself, you can’t listen to both conversations, and if it’s between you and a stranger and you and yourself, who do you think you are going to listen to? And so I just think observation is so important.
And finally, the final M in MOM stands for mechanics. And I don’t mean the person who fixes your car. I mean the tools, the tips, the techniques you use for remembering name, for remembering a speech, or for reading faster, for whatever your reason is. But the reason why I put it last is one, if you are not motivated to, want to learn something or remember it or if you don’t observe it, to begin with, then the techniques or the mechanics are not very useful. So remember your mom.
Robyn Benson: Easy to remember, right?
Jim Kwik: Yeah, because it’s working already and I will get also the part on the self-care. But actually let me give you one mechanic, one tip for remembering names because that’s a big one. And I would say this. Remember this: BE Swap. And I am going to go through really quick. The B stands for belief, we’ve already talked about it, right. Henry Ford said the famous quote, “If you believe you can or if you believe you can’t, either way you’re right”. And if you want to tweet this also, and you could – Robyn and Self-Care Revolution, take myself Jim Kwik, Kwik is my real last name, to get the conversation going but that’s the social part. And I also love it because taking notes is wanting to learn it, it’s teaching other people. I think that throughout this year long telling people should learn stuff but it teaches other people because when you teach it you get to learn it twice. When you teach something you get to learn it twice.
And so I would sit here, listening to it or if you’re working out or you’re driving, think about like oh, that’s really wonderful and how would I teach this to my friend, how would I teach this to my spouse, how would I teach this to my kids? So B stands for belief, right? So you eliminate your negative self-thought. And I remember I was running – preparing to run my first marathon and I would ride, pick up a book and I was on one of the chapters of psychology of running a marathon, because I had – with the name like Kwik, your destiny is pretty much planned out. And I had to be a runner back in the school. I was a runner back in school, there is a lot of pressure too when your shirt says Kwik right on it. That’s it, be careful, Kevin, Robyn, when I am driving because I don’t want to be pulled over for speeding. You hand the police officer your license and it says Kwik right on it, and you’re not going to talk your way of the ticket, and I get to teach accelerated learning, speed reading, speed memory but I was running this marathon and I had the physical training, this mental training I was curious about and I read one chapter, the first to be opened up with this, “Your mind is a pervade (ph), your mind is a supercomputer and your mind is a supercomputer and your self-talk is the program it will run”. If you tell yourself I am not good with names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet, because you program your computer not to.
I was like wow! That’s belief. So if you say to yourself, I have a bad memory or forget everything and lot of people say cry about things and I find it very interesting nowadays even when going back to self-care, people start kind of glorifying being busy, they start having cried about how they are forgetful they we are. And I just think it’s reinforcing the wrong result that we’re looking yet because we start and excited about forgetting things and start becoming self-evident. So the B is eliminating your negative self-talk, replacing with positive. E is exercise, and the B/E is exercise, and I don’t mean physical exercise, although that’s one of my habits for personal self-care –exercise because those people who are more physically active will perform better on mental agility test and focus also as well. So exercise is important but I don’t mean physical exercise, I mean practice. So you practice these mental tools because practice makes – we all know it, right, practice makes perfect sometimes. Like I like to say something, practice makes permanent or practice makes progress. So practice makes progress because there is always another level.
And so I would practice these tools, so whenever you’re meeting somebody practice what you’re about to learn right now, and because what practice in your private life you are awarded for big time in your public life. And so you definitely want to do that. So that is the exercise practice and it could be watching television and just practice – you’re watching the news, they introduce somebody, practice remembering their name because the bad news is to take efforts. That’s the bad news. It takes work like anything worthwhile but the good news is it doesn’t take as much as you probably think. Like I am very good at remembering people’s names or memorizing a deck of cards and memorizing words and speeches but I haven’t gotten much better at it. Once you know how to, for example, read faster or remember someone’s name, and maybe it took me 30 or 60 days of practice but then after that you know how to do it just like you know how to type or you know how to drive a car. And so practice, exercise.
And then finally swap, next time you are at an event or you’re at a conference, you’re at a health event or whatever your networking, as you’re looking in the mirror and you’re checking your makeup or checking your clothing, I want you to say to yourself BE SUAVE, and S means you say the name. Say it. All right. So if someone gives you their name, you say the name. And Robyn, it’s nice to meet you. Kevin, it’s real pleasure. You say it and the reason why you say it is because it means you observe it going back to Mom, the O the observation because you don’t want to talk to somebody in bed and say good bye Ed. You start to get corrected upfront, so you say the name, and you get to hear it twice. The U is use the name. When you use it, so use it well in a conversation, three or four times intelligently in a conversation but you don’t abuse it. Use and abuse it, it’s only two words difference right? Aba and b, abusing it would be – Kevin, it’s really nice to talk to you. Kevin, you want to have launch, Kevin, what should we talk about? Kevin, that would be an abuse right? But use it three or four times.
The A is great when you’re meeting new people who have different names. 90% of the names of the people you meet probably are you’ve heard before, three of us have pretty common names, Kevin, Robyn, Jim and such but if you meet somebody 10% of the time is a new name, a name you haven’t heard. And the A stands for Ask. You want to ask about the name. Like what kind of questions can you ask about a person’s name?
Kevin Snow: Yeah, that’s good. Sometimes maybe we feel a little rude, I already forgot the name and we feel embarrassed even to ask even when we are right talking to somebody new.
Jim Kwik: Yeah, and it’s really new to somebody who has name like Assad, or Rodriguez, or Asis, or whatever their name is, so I think everyone’s favorite subject is themselves. And so you can ask about the origin of the name or how do you spell their name or who you’re named after, are you related to this person who has the same last name, or what does it mean? And I remember I was doing this training at the country’s largest life insurance company, about 100 people in the room and the training director was there. Her name was Nanchita. Nanchita, well that’s a really beautiful name. Where is it from, how do you spell and so on, and I asked what does it mean? She looked frowned at her co-workers and she says – she paused and then she said, it means graceful falling waters. I was like, wow! That graceful falling waters, that’s beautiful, I put an image in my mind and I could remember it. And based on her co-workers’ response on that, I said its inspiring and I was like how long have you worked here, she said it’s like four years. I was like there’s many of these people here, yeah, many of them are very good friends without my waiting, and I was like that’s interesting. I was like how many people raise your hand knew that Nanchita name means, and out of 100 people, not one person raised their hand. So that’s the power of asking and I mean think about the power of a name, the name is someone’s identity right, it’s probably – think about the emotion and the positive connection people have to their own name, it’s probably one of the very first words you learn how to write and how much positive reinforcement will you give in no matter how sloppy your writing was at that time for doing it correctly. So you ask about a name.
And then finally the V stands for Visualize. You visualize the name because I bet you most people who are listening to this you’re better with faces than you’re with names. You always go to somebody say hey, I remember your face but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say the opposite. You never go to someone, hey, I remember your name and I forgot your face. That won’t make any sense. But if you tend to remember the face, there is a reason why, it’s because more of your brain is dedicated towards your visual processing. And there is a Chinese proverb that goes, “What I hear I forget, what I see I remember and what I do I understand”. What I hear I forget. I heard the name, I forgot the name. What I see remember. I saw the face, so I remember the face and what I do going back to practice and exercise, I understand. So the visualizing means if you tend to remember what you see, then try seeing what you want to remember. Because this will be simple as if a person’s name is Mark, imagine yourself taking a marker out of your pocket and putting a checkmark on their forehead.
If the person’s name is Mike, imagine them jumping on the table and singing karaoke on a microphone. If the person’s name is Mary, the picture – what can you picture for Mary? Imagine you meet someone named Mary and you’re forced to marry them, your wedding gown and everything, and if it makes you laugh and put some energy in your mind, that’s why you remember it, because these strategies are useful, these memory strategies because if you don’t – I call it the six-second syndrome, you have six seconds to do something with the information, otherwise they get lost. And that’s how we sketch you to focus on it, if the person’s name is Carol, you could imagine them Christmas carol, right. If you meet someone named Bob, I picture them Bob in Crapples, David, I think about sling shot. Why, for David? David and Goliath. So I just sketch a slingshot and you’re doing in the privacy of your own mind, it’s fun too and that’s why who are the fastest learners on the planet, they are children and they do the same things. So I do that. So first name is John, you could picture, whatever picture for John, all right. And so for Kevin, I think of a cave-in. Robin, obvious the red Robin.
And then finally the E in SUAVE stands for End, which means you leave saying good bye that new person saying their name. And Robyn, it’s been a real pleasure. Kevin, have a wonderful day. Jim, thank you so much for coming. Because if you could walk into a room and meet 10 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one of them using their name, who did they all remember? You, that’s a real standout skill. And we have a — I know we arranged also for Self-Care Revolution for everyone who is listening, we have a tape – we’d also like to give everybody – it’s actually a training on how to remember names and you will see me on a live event where actually four people right from the audience and you get the practices, and we go even further into it. And you could have that as our gift. So thank you.
Robyn Benson: You can go to www.superheroyou.com/care.
Jim Kwik: Yes, so if you go right now, you go to superheroyou, to write it down, superheroyou.com/care and you’ll get that free tips. And enjoy. And I will follow up with some other wonderful training.
Robyn Benson: Thank you so much, Jim. That’s a whole hour of information. And just for all the listeners, I am a student of Jim Kwik. So I can’t tell you how much information has helped me, I speak a lot, got a full life. So but the main thing I have got better at – but it’s good to be reminded hear the MOM, I am so grateful for this. And having a name like Robyn, the other thing is – too many people they care how their name is spelled, like the only thing I like about my name Robyn is the Y. And I love it. Not only it’s made people to remember my name, they know it to spell it right. That wonderful Y.
Jim Kwik: I like it. Yeah very memorable. It’s very memorable. So those are few things you could do and you don’t have to do everything but just they will be able to improve your ability to remember names and practice it. And you get practice it actually on the video. I’ll introduce you to brand new like just random strangers come on stage and I don’t even know who they are and then I get their name and you can practice this technique and learn and going further. And I also teach you another method on how to remember name as easy as PIE. It’s a 3-step process PIE, that’s just to take to the next level.
I don’t want to think that it should be mentioned, you said that a lot of people have trouble with overwhelm and overload and anxiety and there’s information anxiety and so I still want to get to my 10 self-care tips that I wanted to share it in terms of my lifestyle. But I thought maybe really quickly we could just – maybe talk just five or 10 minutes on the thing called speed reading, because a lot of people have taken or might have taken speed reading class back in the `70s and traditional speed-reading has been long associated with skipping words or scanning or skinning or getting the gist of what people read. And that’s wonderful. I think it’s a very useful to be able to skim and scan through information quickly. What we teach is something called quick reading which not only just focuses on reading speed but also reading comprehension, reading understanding, reading focus, reading retention of what you read because I think all those, not just speed-reading but smart really is important.
But I wanted to give a couple of tips on what people to do to improve their reading speed maybe 25%, even 50% right now and which is incredible 50% increase. The average person reads by the way three hours a day. Three hours a today. Think about all the books that you need to get through, the newspapers, the online reading, the texts and email, three hours. Even if you could cut that in half 90 minutes or an hour a day, do you think an hour a day, just one hour, that’s 365 hours a year. How many 40 hour work weeks of that, that’s more than two months, that’s nine weeks of productivity you get back. And so when we’re talking about how would you like to spend an extra hour that you save reading towards your own self-care? So you get to spend more time meditating or spend more time resting and sleeping or doing things for your stress management, or reducing or exercise. So that’s why I really like about it.
So I wanted to give you — let me give you really quick five obstacles for effective reading. Okay. These are five obstacles, really rapidfire that get in the way of you being a better reader and not just reading speed but reading comprehension. And so the first one is lack of education and we already talked about that. Reading is a skill, it’s not something that you’re born with. You didn’t just crawl, we aren’t born and crawled out to the waiting room and start to speed-reading magazine and stuff like that. I didn’t do that. I never actually read a book cover to cover schoolbook until I got to college, and that’s how poor of a learner I was, and so the learning of the skill and like all skills they can be improved with the correct training. So I could practice typing with two fingers but a much better is to learn to train with hold a pen and fingers and working smart. So but the last time you took a reading class probably you’re eight years old, and that’s pretty much how people start reading like when they are eight. That’s number two.
Number two, and this is a big one, have a focus. If you’ve ever had trouble while you read to focus, maybe your mind wanders, you get to the bottom of the page and you forget what you just read. You start daydreaming. I think it’s because of this. They say your brain is a supercomputer, and I think we use a 100% of our brain, it’s just how we use it different. But this is unbelievable supercomputer but when we read we feed it one word at a – and you feel it, right? Like I was talking like that throughout the entire conversation. Everyone’s mind, we start to daydreaming, you turn it off, you would start focusing on the things. But that definitely happens when you read, you start to daydream, you start to focus on other things, most people read so painfully slow that they have no focus. Their attention goes everywhere else, and if you don’t give your brain the entertainment it needs, it will seek stimulus elsewhere in the form of distraction.
So in actuality people think that if you read faster your comprehension would go down. I tested thousands of people around the world, everything single year and I could tell you that in general faster readers have better comprehension because they are better focused, because it’s similar to driving. You’re driving through your neighborhood 20 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, are you really focused on driving? You can be either ended up at home or ended at work, you don’t even remember like the trip getting there. So you’re not conscious, right? What are you doing? You’re conscious of other things. You’re listening to the radio, you’re texting and shouldn’t you be thinking about the baby, the kids, the bills, and you’re drinking your Starbucks, you’re doing like six, seven different things when you’re going 20, 30 miles an hour.
But let’s say you’re racing a car and you’re taking hairpin turns at 100 miles an hour. Do you have more or less focus at 100 miles an hour? More, literally a lot. Are you paying attention to anything else? Are you thinking about the kids, or the bills or trying to drink something or text something? Of course not, right? And so the speed gives you the focus and the focus gives you the comprehension. So I think a lot of people lack focus because they are going too slow. For me I think it’s like riding a bike too slow. You can’t – if you ride a bike too, you fall off.
Third obstacle and this is the big one, subvocalization. Subvocalization means have you ever noticed when you’re reading something to yourself, you hear that inner voice inside your head reading along with you? Hopefully it’s your own voice, there is no like somebody else’ voice. Subvocalization is a problem because if you have to say all the words inside your mind in order to understand them, that means you can only read as fast as you speak. That means your reading speed limit eliminates your talking speed and not your thinking speed. Like if I was to take a word like television, you don’t have to pronounce the world “television” to understand what a television means. Any more than you have to see someone that you know, hey Michael and you have to say to yourself Michael, you understand what it is. You don’t have to pronounce it any more than you would pronounce. A stop sign. Like when you are driving you don’t say to yourself stop when you see a stop sign. You comprehend it exactly what it is and 95% of all the words you will ever read day-to-day are what they call say words. The words you don’t have to pronounce and most people read about 200 words per minute because that’s the average talking speed. But how do you get up to 400 or 500, 800 words a minute? Impossible to speak that fast. And so our students that go through our program they’re more – they reduced their subvocalization so they can read by site based on sound.
So these are – there are couple more obstacles, another one is regression that’s keeping you from you reading new words, such as the one I would say is belief again, limiting beliefs. But here is one thing you can do right now to improve your reading speed 25%, 50% right now is use your finger while you’re reading. Use your finger while you read. Now in school we’re taught not to use our finger while we read, right, because you’re taught you’re not to do it and I think it’s kind of like typing. You know like, you know how they designed the old typewriters, or leaving Qs right now, people wonder why every comp use ASDF and why they do it like that? And people think it’s to optimize like the thing. But it’s actually not, it’s actually to be able to pull you down. That’s why the letters are where they are. Because back then not on the computers, it’s certainly in the old typewriters, what would happen if you typed too fast? We could (inaudible) and so I think people there is a conspiracy theory to say, you try not to use your finger, it’s actually to keep people learning slow.
But I will tell you the physiological reason to use your finger while you read. First of all, test yourself. If you read something for a minute, count to nine and then re-read it, just underlining the words with your finger for another minute, you will find a 25% to 50% jump across the board. I will tell you why. First of all, you do it. Like you don’t need your finger, most people don’t use their finger, and by the way finger could be any visual pager, a highlighter or pen and pencil and mouse on the computer, the ink that’s underlining the words for you, but you do it. Like you’re not going to use your finger while you read, but I am asking you to count to number one page that you just read 100% of the people will use their index finger or a pen start counting with it. And children naturally do it, kind of interesting organic learning. Children will just – if you don’t teach them, they will use their finger naturally when they read.
But thirdly your eyes are attracted to emotion. So as your finger is going across the page your eyes are pulled like something ran across the room, you would look because they are reliable, you need to look at what is new in the environment. So as your finger is moving it will pull you through the information as both of your attention is being pulled apart. But another big reason is how your nervous system is set up. Like certain senses are very closely linked, like have you ever tasted like great tasting peach, no, people love it to taste, it’s like a fresh peach right off, they’re buying right from the farmers market, in actuality you’re not tasting the peach, you’re smelling the peach that your sense of smell and your sense of taste are so closely linked that your mind doesn’t know the difference.
Just like your sense of smell and taste are closely linked, so is your sense of sight and your sense of touch. People that read with their finger, they’ll tell me all the time they literally feel more in touch with their reading. In fact and that’s called a comprehension. In fact, people lose their sense of sight, how do they read? Using like Braille and using their fingers. So using your finger while you read, just underlining the words will boost your reading speed or a highlighter, I like to use a pen, I’d have little notation system 25, 50% — 50% increase in speed will save you 20 minute on every hour. It doesn’t seem like a lot but add a couple hours of reading a day will save you 40 minutes, that will work out.
Robyn Benson: Jim, Kevin has no more papers to write. So you give him some extra time today from all the reading –
Kevin Snow: I absolutely will.
Jim Kwik: That’s just in terms of the basics, now there is a way to speeding that up and getting rid of subvocalization that we train but this is a wonderful school you could do right now. So like right now you could actually go and practice MOM, practice BE SUAVE, practice using your finger while you read, and what I love about the work that we are talking about, we talk about quick learning, everything is measurable. But you could – I love things where you get results right away. Even if you don’t get perfect remembering everyone’s name, you can start remembering two or three more names with that. You start reading 25 or 50%, get to read extra 10 pages a day, get an extra 20, 30 minutes now a day, it starts to really add up over time. Really quickly, here are my 10 things and these are things that I would assume a lot of people do for self-care but I am going to tell you what 10 of them are, so there’s many more. But these 10 will give you a lot of bang for your bucks, a lot of them, half of them are like free. These are wonderful.
And I touched about a couple of things from Dr. Daniel Amen, this is one of our faculty, he has written 30 books on the brain and we are featuring in his latest book Use Your Brain To Change Your Age, that’s how we met. But here are the 10 things. You can write things down because I am going to teach you how to memorize them. First thing is a good diet. Right, the diet. The second thing is killing ants. Killing ants. And that’s from Dr. Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life and ant answers automatic negative thoughts. Remember going back to beliefs, get rid of those negative thoughts. So that’s going to really hurt your self-care especially for your brain.
The third thing I do for self-care especially for mental self-care, the third thing is exercise. Physical exercise and something every day I read and I write, right. I just have to be active, being engaged type. I find that sometimes when people retire out of work, some means to retire their mind too. And shortly after that they retire their life. And there is a great study also on super moms in the cover of Time magazine where they wanted to find how these women were living in their 70s, 80s, 90s, 100s and above and they found out half of it had to do with their gratitude and their faith which is incredible for emotions. The other half of it though had to do with how mentally active they were their entire lifetime. That’s what that was adding years to their life and life in their years. And so exercise. That’s important. That’s the third thing.
The fourth thing, brain nutrients. All nutrients in general, I pulled this on self-care for the brain but just want to tailor for your brain nutrients, so you’re getting your vitamin D, your omega and so on. The fifth thing, positive peer group. A positive peer group is so important for your self-care, being around friends that encourage you, inspire you especially when it comes to learning and self-care for your brain, being around people that stimulate you, that challenge you in that way, very important. Number six, clean environment. Clean environment is so important for your self-care and they find that your external environment reflects your internal world also. So after that, number seven, belief. Very important. Most people aren’t getting anywhere near as much belief that they need, and so belief is so important. That’s where you’re actually making those connections, you’re consolidating long-term memories, your dreaming which helps you to create amazing things in the world.
Number eight is brain protection. Now this is again self-care for the brain. Brain protection meaning things like be careful of how much your brain like I had one when I was five. Wear a helmet for example. So there is lot of research done on concussions in NFL players and boxers and you got to protect your brain. And number nine, new learning. So important for self-care to learn new things every single day. New learning, I can’t – that’s probably one of the most important things for me. That’s why I do what I do, and I will tell you a story how I started on it in terms of teaching and there is difference in learning it is your new learning. You always want to learn new things and Abraham Lincoln always talked about never going to sleep, putting his head on the pillow being the same person he was when he woke up and so the best and best man is always in yourself. Knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit and not just financial profit, that’s obvious, I mean the treasures in every area of your life especially your health and you relationships.
And then finally number 10 is stress management. Stress management because one of the things that will kill like lot of your memories and your ability to think is stress and we know it. Quarters all (inaudible), your body shutdown, big parts of your brain put you in spite of firefight, which is great if you need to run, or be in conflict but it doesn’t help you to be a better thinker, remember, or focus or in such. So those are the 10 things, so really quickly I am going to show you a way to be able to memorize all 10 things. And what I am going to ask you to do if it’s safe close your eyes. Only if it’s safe, help you focus, take a deep breathe. Take a breathe, exhale, just breathe normally, I am going to take you through a quick visualization exercise. Close eyes process. I want you to imagine – and in my office where we teach all these speed-reading and memory programs is in the suburbs of New York, in Westchester, New York. And so imagine a big glass building with lot of trees and that’s where our office is in there. And you just say the car picked you at the airport and you are in the back seat and you drive, I am going to help you find 10 places in my office. I am going to show you why in a second.
Behold into the parking lot and right there in the back is the parking lot, and the parking lot is a very first place, we’re going to name 10 places. The first place is the parking lot, all right. You get out and it’s a beautiful day out, you see with this waterfall stream and kind of like moth around the building, in order to get to the building you have to across the bridge, and the bridge is the second place. You cross yourself, you start crossing the bridge, bridge is number two. You go into the building, you get into the third place which is the elevator. See yourself, even if you can’t imagine it, just imagine you’re imagining it in the sense that they are step into the elevator it’s the third place. Step out of the elevator, go into the fourth place which is the hallway. So you start walking in the hallway, that’s your fourth place. Good.
The fifth place, you walk into the office. Immediately to your left is the fifth place is the closet. Go to the closet, that’s your fifth place. You leave the closet. You go to the receptionist. The, our receptionist is the sixth place. Behind the receptionist is this gorgeous fish tank. The fish tank is your seventh place. Around the corner is the door to your speed reading class. That’s your ninth place is the door. So your eighth place is your door. The ninth place, as you walk into the door right in front is the whiteboard. That whiteboard is your ninth place. And then your tenth place, the final place are all these bonsai trees on the side of the classroom. See all these bonsai Japanese trees. That’s your 10th place.
Okay. Those are your 10 places. Now what I just showed you is a method – it’s kind of like the location method. We’ve had 10 locations and back 100 years ago there was this Greek author named (inaudible) that he created this method to be able to memorize speeches without notes. And he noted that if you put information in certain places that you’re familiar with, you can remember those different points to a speech. So what we’re going to do is take the 10 keys to self-care for your brain and put them in your 10 new places in my office. So keep your eyes closed and you go into the first place, which is the what — what was the first place? Parking lot. I want you to imagine as you’re getting out of the parking lot, there is a big, there is the diet right there. The big café, good diet. And really picture it, everyone who is listening to this picture it. It’s big, it’s a wonderful good diet. You go over after you are done. You cross your second place which is the what – the bridge and you start killing ants. It’s not a pleasant thought, you start stepping and killing ants, right. You go into the building and you can step into the third-place which are your what – elevator. And once you get in there, because all these people are doing, crossed feet, yoga, exercise, and just imagine Billy Blanks, Tae Bo, or P90X 24/7, Zumba, Richardson and I don’t know who’s in there exercise.
Step out into the fourth place, and that’s the hallway, right? And as you’re going up the hallway I want you to imagine you’re like Indiana Jones, you’re jumping on the – over the big bottles of brain nutrients, and that’s your – the next thing remember the fourth thing is brain nutrients. Imagine all these bottles of vitamins that you are jumping over. You go into the office and nearly to your left is the what – the closet. You open the closet and there is your positive peer group. All your friends smiling, that’s your positive peer group. You go up to the sixth place which is the receptionist, right, and while you’re actually there, she is cleaning her environment. That’s to remind you she is cleaning environment. Behind her is the seventh place which is what – the fish tank. All the fish are sleeping and they’re snoring. They’re just sleeping. Okay, that’s remind you sleep. And then you go over to the classroom and the doorway, it’s the eighth place, and I want you to imagine you’re putting on a helmet and you’re headbutting the door open. That’s to remind you the helmet of brain protection. That’s your eighth thing for self-care for the brain.
And then finally number nine is – what place is that – the whiteboard. With the whiteboard, and then the whiteboard I want you to see as me and I am teaching speed reading, new learning. See me writing on the whiteboard new learning. And then finally is the bonsai trees on the side, and the bonsai trees, I want you to remember stress management. And stress management just picture anything that represents stress management for you. Maybe you’re there getting a massage. Maybe you are there entertaining.
Robyn Benson: How about even a bonsai tree open – alive and healthy.
Jim Kwik: Exactly. So let’s do this now. So you start now, you need to give a speech on this. Let’s say you are the memory expert. You just learned this great and wonderful 10 things about how to self-care for your brain and you’re in front of an audience, you need to remember the 10 things in order. All you have to do now is mentally walk and tell all your places. And by the way if you ever said in the first place this, on the second place that, and third place, that’s where they came from is locked part of the memory. So what’s in your first place – let’s go to the brain tips, self-care brain tips. Number one, what was in your first place? Drive-up, get out of the parking lot is what – the diet. Good. Even if you are listening to this at home, shout it out loud.
You go to second place and you cross the bridge to remind you of what – ant. Automatic negative thoughts. Third thing you walk into the elevator – I just love it. You get out into the fourth place which is what – hallway, you start to what – you’re jumping over the brain nutrient bottles. And perfect. That’s very important, that’s your brain nutrient. And then you go to the closet and you have the what – all your positive friends, that’s important for good brain self-care and then you go to the sixth place which is the receptionist. And what is she doing? Cleaning the environment. Behind there is a fish tank, what are they doing? Sleeping and then you go to the door to the classroom and you put on your what – the helmet. Reminding you about brain protection. And then you go into the classroom and I am up there writing on the whiteboard, and what am I writing? New learning. Lastly the bonsai tree is what – stress management.
Those are my keys to self-care for my brain. Unlock the genius inside of you, I think obviously there’s more in terms of journaling and there’s a whole bunch of choosing that I do and everything else. But that’s something that goes really far. And I would encourage people out there, if you go to SuperheroYou.com/care you get this gift from myself and from the Self-Care Revolution and get a number of videos on how to train your brain and how to do more of this stuff, much more in-depth. We don’t have the time to do here and all those you will get. And then on top of it if I can just 30 seconds, how I got started.
So I learned all these wonderful tools and I couldn’t help it, help other people. And so I put together like tutoring for students and one of the young ladies, she had problems struggling with — struggling with the speed reading, for a couple of weeks she was still reading at the same pace while everyone else had doubled, tripled, or quadrupled their reading speed after a couple weeks. And she came to me and she was really concerned, and I guess from some more pointers and there’s not only something clicked from her and she ends up reading 30 books in 30 days. How many people would love to read a book a day, even a book a week? And then 52 books a year, how different would your life be right now? What kind of books would you want to read if you could read 52 books a year? The average person by the way reads one book a year. And so it’s frightening especially if you want the wonderful answers, and I wanted to find out, I was curious, I’ve never seen anyone read that much before because I haven’t been reading that much. And I wanted to not – I didn’t know — need to know how she did it, how did I know how she did it, I want to know why she did it.
Remember going back to motivation and MOM and I found out after asking her that her mother was dying of cancer. She was given 60 days to live and the books that she was reading were books on health and wellness and self-care. And she was determined to save her mother’s life. And I still get chilled thinking about this. My wife calls them truth bumps, instead of goosebumps. But I was just like wow! I hope this helps you and she took — she opened one of the books that she was using picture — photo as a bookmark and here was her mom in a hospital and it reminded me so much when I was in the hospital. And I was like wow! Anyway fast forward to six months and I get a call from this young lady, and she had tears in her voice, and they are tears of joy. And I find out that her mother not only survived past the 60 days, but she’s really now starting to thrive. Doctors don’t know how she is getting better but her mother attributes it to all the wonderful place she learned from her daughter that learned this from all these books. And that’s where it really hit me that this kind of information that’s being shared, even on this call, perhaps that’s right ideas when they are implemented could totally change or even save a life.
But do we have the tools to be able to find that information, to filter it, to focus on it, to understand it and to learn it, to comprehend it, to read it, to retain it, to apply it and that’s really been my life’s work is to help people unlock their – what I think is the ultimate superpower, which is learning, how to learn. And by the way she ended up giving me one of those books when we had first met, those 30 books. And one of the books I read it after her mother survived and such and it was a book on quantum physics related to health. And I was blown away by it. I keep a journal and I think that’s one of the things my self-care is important. I wrote it and I didn’t even know its author, I am not ready right now but give me two years and I can have a good conversation with him, I write down in my journal. Two years later, I am speaking in Boston, and I will lead the assembly hall. I turned the corner and there is the author. Two years to the date, and that book was on quantum physics. And there was Deepak Chopra. And totally we ended up having this amazing lunch conversation and we are still friends to this day. And he talked about characters of 60,000 thoughts a day but the problem is Jim, 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts they had yesterday.
So my challenge to everyone listening to this, what are your new thoughts? What are your new actions? What are your new steps that you are going to take to be able to take care of yourself, to initiate self-care, to optimize and maintain your health at higher levels so you could be a real superhero. The superhero unleashes their powers and inspires other people to do the same. And I hope one of those things would be maximizing your mind and fall in love again with learning and making it fun.
Robyn Benson: This is amazing power hour. I can’t wait to definitely have this replay for my 11 and 13 year old. But we are getting quite a few questions, one of them about children learning especially when there is so much care and so much greens and all that, what’s your advice about that?
Jim Kwik: Yes, I mean I will say – I would say that I am not a doctor and certainly talk to healthcare professional that understands this. Anything that we teach can be applied towards children. In fact, we encourage a lot of our parents and educators we work with share this with the children in their lives, because children pick this stuff up so much faster than adults because what we do as adults is I think a lot of learning challenges. There is no such thing as good or bad memory. It’s just a good — trained and untrained but there is also good habit of learning. And I find that there’s also bad habits in learning. And so what we do with a lot of what we — our training on these things is helping people unlearn the poor learning habit that we picked up. And so for children they have trouble focusing.
I will say by the way my personal experience with a lot of children is if you teach them in a way – even my children right now are growing up with joysticks and iPhone and iPad, right? They will use information being so dynamic and so fast and when they get to class and they are forced to sit down and not move their body and be lectured to, and hoping the information gets pushed into their brain, it’s so counterintuitive to what our children are right now. And I find that this – if I ask everyone to write their name, if you can write your name, first and last on a piece of paper, and then write right below it, even if you don’t have a pen, use your opposite hand, write your first and last name. And for most people they cannot attempt to write their name, it takes longer, it’s more uncomfortable and the quality of the writing is not as good. But that really describes a lot people to learning especially children. But sometimes when they learn in a different way than the teacher is teaching, for example, the way the teacher is the first to teach, sometimes it takes longer, it’s uncomfortable and the quality is not quite as good as if they were learning with their dominant hands. And when you wrote your name with your first and last with your dominant hand, it was fast, it was clear, the quality was good, it’s comfortable, and that’s what I find needs to happen in the school system. Find out how children love to learn, how they prefer to learn and then how wonderful would it be to teach them in the style, otherwise it becomes two ships passing in the night. You don’t even realize what’s being missed because the learning style is not the same as the teaching style.
So my advice with children is use all the stuff that we are talking about here. Go to SuperheroYou.com/care, you will get lot of additional training and children can go through that. Certainly children can use their finger while they read. I would actually encourage that and just don’t take my word for it. I think ultimately the expert is not the person on the call or in front on the stage who writes the books. Certainly they are an expert, I think you are the expert. You’re listening to this right now going back to full circle to what Stan Lee talked about and — with great responsibility comes great power. You have the ability to respond and do amazing things with your life and include the life of your children. So teach them all these wonderful things, teach them SUAVE and have them imagine things, teach them the location method. Do it at your house instead of my office. Take five places in your living room. Take five places in your kitchen and then go through grocery list. Great, I am going to put apples in my fireplace. I am going to put the hot chocolate all over my bookshelf. And like wow! I can remember grocery list about doing it, have them read with their fingers, they are better focus and comprehension and speed and then appreciate their current learning style that there is no – it’s not so much with children, it’s not are they smart, it’s how are they smart. And I really do believe that going to – I am a big subscriber to multiple intelligence theory that it’s not just word, verbal and mathematical. Think about all the other wonderful intelligences, all incredible geniuses that could express whether you’re nine or you’re 99.
And so honor their IQ, it’s not something that’s static and something – it only measures a fraction of different thinking and learning and also it can be improved. But it’s not something you’re born with and that you could – it’s like your shoe size that’s static and could grow. Neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, all the science that we’ve discovered in the past 10 years has been more than the previous 1000 years. And it’s funny, I got to the point where I find that people can’t tell me difference because working with as many people that I have of all walks of life from the top CEOs and celebrities to children who have learning challenges, no matter your age or background, education you have genius. It’s just – Do you have the perseverance and face to be able to mark it and also help other people do the same? And I think if we all did that, we raised the collective intelligence and guess of the planet, then we can really go to the next level. And we can solve the biggest challenges we have personally and also around the world, and I think that’s really what the world needs more superheroes like yourself or stepping off to the fence or building a bridge, we’re not working just in their silos but are coming together in creating superhero community and team and where self-care we all start with themselves. As you can – because you can’t give what you haven’t grown. And so learn it and so be the superhero, unlock it, take care of yourself, it could be better for others. And that’s where it starts.
Kevin Snow: We – I certainly, but we appreciate your superhero in this. We’ve had a blast of you today, Jim and –
Robyn Benson: You’re superhero, being observant – in your busy, busy schedule and you shared so much and we could practice today. And it’s the start of revolution, a big part of everything you shared here. Thank you.
Jim Kwik: Thank you for the good works that you do and the entire team because lot of people don’t realize what goes on behind the scene to produce great content and stuff like that. So I also want to thank everyone who listened all the way to the end. If you are here listening to this, almost the 75 minutes into it then you’re a special individual. And you know what, maybe we haven’t met each other in person I too believe that we are kindred spirits that there is a reason why that you are here and I don’t believe it’s just coincidence that we are on the same path of lifelong learning in self-care and I would love to meet you in person. Find me on Facebook and look me on search, it’s Facebook/JimKwik and go to superheroyou.com/care and enjoy the rest of the Self-Care Revolution. I’m looking forward to fill many more also.
Kevin Snow: Well, you mentioned earlier powerful presents. We appreciate your powerful presents.
Robyn Benson: Absolutely and so, we would love for you to come in Santa Fe, come to our venture and to our live event and if you happen to be a free (inaudible) we would love to have you here.
Jim Kwik: Fantastic. Let me check the calendar and I’d love to meet many of you in person.
Robyn Benson: We will give you another 10 steps for your self-care list.
Jim Kwik: Thank you for all of you. You mentor superheroes, you self-care superheroes and thank you people for the – and everyone for the keeps that you wear.
Kevin Snow: Thank you.
Robyn Benson: Okay. We have a little song here.
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