How to 10X Your Brain Power & Learn ANYTHING in 15 Minutes | Jim Kwik

Hey everyone, welcome to, to the show. On today's episode, we have Jim Kwik. Jim is a leading brain performance and accelerated learning expert and the founder of the Kwik Learning Program. And he was once known as the boy with the broken brain. Today we're gonna talk about a lot of things, everything from how to improve your memory, your focus, how to optimize your mindset. We'll talk a little bit about nutro— nutrition, and nootropics and a whole lot more. Jim, hey, welcome to the show.

That's good to be here, Josh. Thank you for having me, and thank everyone who's tuning in.

Well, hey, I know you have a really amazing story about a head injury you sustained as a child and how some of that led you to your amazing work in helping people boost their brain and neurological health, improve their focus and work performance, and a whole lot more. So share with us a story about how you got into the space.

Yes. So you could say my inspiration was my desperation. When I speak at events, I'll often, if there's time, do some demonstrations where maybe we'll pass around a microphone in the audience and 50 or 100 people introduce themselves and I'll memorize all their names or they'll give me like 100 words or digit number, 100-digit number, and I'll remember it forwards and backwards. But I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you. I do this to express to you what's possible because the truth is all your listeners could do that and a lot more regardless their age or their background, career, education level, financial situation, gender, history, IQ. The reason why I know it's possible is I grew up with some severe learning disabilities. As you alluded to, when I was, when I was 5 years old, I was in kindergarten class and I took a very bad fall headfirst into a radiator and I was rushed to the emergency room. And, you know, my parents said before I was very energized and curious and playful, I became very shut down. I would have these migraines every single day when I was young. I just thought it was normal. Be very forgetful, poor attention. It took me 3 years longer to learn how to read. And that was, that was very embarrassing every single day. Yeah, I had poor focus. And I remember I was slowing at processing issues. So basically, parents, my parents, my teachers would repeat themselves. They would have to repeat themselves over and over again. And then I didn't always get it. I always pretend to understand, but I didn't really understand. When I was 9 years old, I was slowing down a class. This was kind of just a kind of even I get choked up thinking about it. I was being teased pretty harshly for it because I just didn't understand the lessons like, you know, the rest of the kids. And a teacher came to my defense and she pointed to me in front of the whole class and said, "Leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain." And at that point, I didn't know I had a broken brain, but that became my belief system. That label became my limits. Every single time I had balance issues, I wasn't very coordinated. Every time I wasn't picked for sports or every single time I did badly in school, which was daily, I would always say, oh, because I have the broken brain. And then years later, you know, I was 18, I found a mentor. I started studying brain science. I was really obsessed with answering this question, how does my brain work so I could work my brain? How does my memory work so I could work my memory? And I started studying adult learning theory and multiple intelligence theory. I was just— because school, I thought, would teach you how to learn, but there are no classes on that, right? There are classes when we grew up, or classes on what to learn— math, history, science, Spanish— but there were zero classes on how to learn, like how to focus. How do you really concentrate and study? How do you, how do you read faster? All the things that we teach, there's no class called memory, right? I always thought it should have been the fourth R in school— reading, writing, arithmetic, and remembering. Socrates said learning is remembering. Going to somebody like your kids or, you know, your family members and pointing to them and saying, hey, will you just study? Will you just focus? Will you just memorize this? It's like going to somebody saying, play the didgeridoo or play the ukulele, who's never been taught how to do that. And I feel like our brains are our number one wealth-building asset, but it doesn't come with an owner's manual, right? You buy something and usually comes with instructions on how to use it. So the nature of my work the past 30-plus years has been to help build a better, brighter world, you know, one brain at a time. No brain left behind. So we help people to, as you mentioned, optimize their brain performance, help them teach them strategies on how to learn faster. And I think it's one of the most important skills to master in the 21st century. As everyone's distracted, how do you focus? As everyone has information anxiety, like taking a sip of water out of a fire hose, trying to keep up with everything. So it's about upgrading those skills. And again, I just know it's possible. We have students in every country in the world and we get a lot of feedback. And I just know everyone who's listening wherever they are right now that they can improve.

Yeah, that's so good. You know, I really resonate with your story because I have something very similar— well, different, but similar— to where I was. I had a teacher tell me when I was younger that, you know, essentially questioned— she said, what do you want to do when you get older? And I said, I want to be a doctor. And she laughed because I was averaging a, you know, a C minus. Well, I was averaging, I was getting a D in the class, just got an F on a paper. And then a couple weeks later I got an ADHD diagnosis and the doctor's talking about me like I'm not in the room. And I thought, well, not, I'm medically not smart if I have, you know, these issues. And so I really resonate with that. I think there's a lot of people with these limiting beliefs, you know, about themselves. And share with me a little bit about sort of, you know, your research and what you've done. To help people, you know, your book's called Limitless. How can we— it's similar to limiting beliefs, right? Limitless. How do we start to remove the limits in terms of what we're capable of?

So there's a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher that everyone— we could turn this into a little master mini masterclass so they could take notes if they're able, if not working out or driving, that life is the letter C between the letters B and D. Where B is birth and D is death. Life, C, choice. That I truly believe our lives are the sum total of all the choices we've made up to this point. What are we going to eat? Who are you going to spend time with? What are we going to feed our minds? What are we going to do as a career? What have you. And I believe that these difficult times, they could distract you. These difficult times, they could diminish you. Or these difficult times, they could develop you. We ultimately decide with our choices. So, um, You know, the book is heavily endorsed by like Dr. Rudy Tanzi, who's an Alzheimer's researcher at Harvard University, by the founding director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Brain Health. And when I speak at these institutions, we know that about one-third of your brain performance is predetermined by genetics and biology, but about two-thirds is in your control. And these are the levers that we, you know, we put our energy towards because it's the hardware taking care of the brain and then the software. How do you learn faster? How do you read faster? Faster? How do you improve your memory and solve problems? But there are 3 choice points we focus on, and there are 3 M's. It's called— I call it the Limitless Model. And at any given time, no matter what situation you're in, you could always control your mindset, your motivation, and the methods you're using. So if someone wants to be healthier, you know, it's a mindset, it's a motivation to do the things right, and then the methods in order to do that. And I find so many people out of fear or the current situation, they downgrade their dreams to meet their current, you know, status as opposed to upgrading their mindset, their motivation, and the methods. So we always start with, with mindset because I feel like a lot of people know the methods, they know what they should be doing, but we don't always do what we know, right? Because common sense is not often common practice. And we hear all the benefits of prioritizing your sleep and eating a good diet and exercise and movement and stress management and meditation. But if you're not doing consistently, first we look at your mindset. So your mindset what I— how I define it functionally, so it's practical, are the set of assumptions and attitudes you have about something. You know, what do you believe is possible? What do you believe you're capable of? You know, you might believe that Josh is capable of doing this, but do you believe that you can make these changes? And also what you believe you deserve. And it's been my experience that your brain is this incredible supercomputer and your self-talk, your beliefs are the program it will run. So if you tell yourself, something common like, I'm not good at remembering, I'm too old, or I'm not good at remembering names. You won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your computer not to, because your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk. And, you know, I have this principle that all behavior is belief-driven. If you want to create a new result in your life, you want to get healthy, you want to lose weight, you want to make money, you want to read faster, you need to do a new behavior. But in order to do that, new behavior, you need a belief that says that's even possible, right? At events, people often pull me aside before I go on stage and say, I'm so glad you're here as a memory coach. I'm just too old. I'm really not that smart. I have a horrible memory. And I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you fight for your limits, they're, they're yours. And so just even a simple self-awareness is a superpower. Just being aware that you have these thoughts or beliefs. And then when you find yourself saying something that might be disempowering, just edit it. Like if you say like, I'm not good, I don't have a great memory, you could just add a little word at the end, catch yourself and say, I don't have a great memory yet. Because it just opens up the possibility and the potentiality of us performing a little bit better. You know, I truly believe if people understood how powerful their mind is, they wouldn't say or think something they didn't want to be true. And that's a pretty bold statement. But then that's not to say you have one negative thought and it ruins your life any more than eating that one donut will ruin your life. But if you eat that donut 20 times a day, every single day, there would be definitely consequences. So, in terms of mindset, I think mindset is a starting point for anything. What you believe is possible, what you believe you're capable of, what you believe you deserve, and so much more.

Yeah, it's so important. A lot of these principles tap into— a lot of it is self-identity, like, who am I? What am I capable of? And I think that these are important questions for people to answer. And it's important to also, as you said, it's important for us to be able to develop the right mindset about these things. And so, when you think about mindset, Jim, what are some of those key mindset? Like, what are— now, you shared some around memory, right? You have people that are older. So, I'm older. That's a limiting belief that, oh, I'm older, so I can't have memory. What are some of those other big limiting beliefs that you tend to see people have?

Yeah, so we open the book talking about mindset and really deconstructing it. And I talk about different lies to learning. A lie for me is an acronym. I use these kind of mental shortcuts like we did back in school using acronyms as little mnemonics to help you remember like you did in med school for anatomy or, you know, ROYGBIV for the colors of the rainbow and the light spectrum. But, you know, what we focus on here, like when we're talking about your mind is Like a lie, for me, the acronym is limited idea entertain, LIE, a limited idea you're entertaining. It might not be true that you're too old or that you're not smart enough, but it's an idea we're giving energy to, right? And we're choosing to believe that with certainty. And so some of those lies that would be relevant in this context would be something like your brain is fixed, like your memory is fixed. You take an IQ test when you're 8 years old and that's is your potential when you're 88 years old. And we've discovered more about the human brain in the past 20 years than the previous, I don't know, 2,000 years combined. And what we found is we're grossly underestimating our own capabilities. And so your brain is not, or your potential, your memory is not fixed like your shoe size. It could improve, right? This is the whole basis of having a growth mindset. And, you know, even when you look at things like phenomenons like neuroplasticity, you know, which is the phenomenon of that our brain can make new connections as, as we age. When you're given novelty and nutrition, it's just like building your, your physical muscles. You go to a personal trainer and they'll make you stronger, they'll make you sharper, more flexible, more pliable, more energized, greater endurance. Well, I want your mental muscles to have greater endurance. I want your memory to be stronger. I want your, your, your focus to be sharper. I want your your thinking to be more flexible and pliable. And so with neuroplasticity, we know that the brain can change. Again, the two factors are giving it novelty, right? Like, just like building a muscle, you give it novelty, you give it stimulus, you exercise it, and then you give it proper nutrition to be able to grow. And same thing with, with your mind. So that would be one of them, that your brain or your potential is fixed, right? Another one would be that knowledge is power. I mean, this is something we say all the time. You hear it all the time, especially in the wellness space or the personal development space. And I don't believe knowledge by itself is power. I think it has the potential to be a lot of power, but it only goes power when we utilize it. So many people go out there and they listen to a podcast like this, and— but if they don't take a new action, nothing changes, right? Somebody spending time and reading, you know, your book And I think reading is one of the most effective brain training exercises you could do. Reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body. If somebody has decades of experience like you do and you put into a book and somebody can sit down and read that book in a few days, they could download decades in, into days. But if somebody's sitting down and reading that book and they don't act on it, their life functionally is no better off than somebody who's illiterate. Right. And so I just want to encourage everyone and just remind them as a coach A coach doesn't always tell them something new. It just— sometimes a coach will remind you what you're doing when you're doing it well, or remind you of principles or processes that you already know, maybe tell you in a different way. But yeah, I just want to remind everybody, for every— my basis is for every hour you spend learning something, like listening to a podcast, reading a book, going to a lecture, you should schedule an equal hour putting it into application. Right? And so those, those are, those are two big lies. And I think that, you know, it's worth exploring and kind of unraveling, you know, for ourselves.

No, it's good. It's so good. What are some of the practical exercises or practical steps people can take in order to start to improve their memory, improve their focus, and get better? And, and what are those areas of expertise that you tend to help people in people, you know, in terms of their, you know, both mental and self-growth.

So I opened the book Limitless, and Limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless is— nobody's perfect, right? Limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you believe is possible, beyond what you're currently demonstrating, right? And so people— there are four— I open up with a story about the Four Horsemen of the Mental Apocalypse, where that's really driven by technology. One of them is digital deluge, which I I termed the term in medicine and healthcare is digital information anxiety, right? Which has real challenges to our health, higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness, right? We're stressed out of our mind. And so that's why we have a whole chapter. We help people with reading faster, learning faster, because the amount of information, people feel like it's taking a sip of water out of a fire hose, right? It's doubling at dizzying speeds. But how we learn it and read it, understand it is pretty much the same, if not falling. So that growing gap creates stress, right? There's no term information fatigue syndrome. So we help people learn faster. So that's one of the things we specialize in, helping people absorb all the information they need to. Another one, Horseman of the Mental Apocalypse, is digital distraction. And I think everyone can relate to this. How do you maintain your focus, your concentration in a world full of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts, in every like, share, comment, cat video. It's giving you this kind of this dopamine flood, you know, the molecule of more and motivation. But how do you maintain your focus and concentration when we're flexing those distraction muscles all day, right? You wake up, you pick up your device, and, you know, your brain's very suggestible. You're in a relaxed state of awareness. And then you start looking at these messages and it just drives you distraction. And you wonder why you can't focus when you're in meetings or when you're with your kids. Or when you're reading something, you read something, get to the end and forget what you just read because your mind's just wandering and going different places. So that's why we have whole chapters on focus, which we could talk about. The third supervillain would be, besides digital delusion, digital distractions, digital deduction. And that's a coin I termed because I wanted to be illiterate, you know, like alliteration with all the D's. Digital deduction is where I saw some research that suggested that this generation has less rational, critical thinking ability. Abilities than the previous, and it alluded to technology. And I mean, just think about our visual spatial awareness. Before we had GPS or Waze to get from here to there, we would actually have to exercise that part of our brain. There's a study done at Oxford, you know, talking about London cabbies, uh, taxi drivers, that they would have to memorize like all the different streets in, in London and they would see that different parts of their brain were very dense because they, that it was very, they had that neuroplasticity that was built there. And, and we could grow our brains, you know, just through novelty or even physical movement. You know, they, a similar study done at Oxford said that jugglers actually had bigger brains. Just learning the act of juggling actually created more white matter in the brain. So, for digital deduction, it's just like, it's like your muscles. It's use it or lose it. And if we're just outsourcing that thinking to algorithms or tells you what to eat or where to go, then we don't have to actually think about it. And it's convenient. Definitely technology. I love this. Technology allows this to happen, right? A lot of us to initially connect and, and, you know, and do this podcast and conversation. But it's also, if you have to go to the bank and it's 8 blocks away and you choose to drive, you're not getting your steps in, right? If your office is on the 3rd floor, your apartment's on the third floor and you're taking the elevator, very convenient technology, but then you don't get to exercise different parts of your body. And if I put my arm in a sling for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't even stay the same, right? It would atrophy. And that, that's what our brains, while they're an organ, they act more like muscles. And so we're not using the way we used to. And finally, the fourth one is digital dementia. And this is a term that I didn't coin. It's in healthcare, saying the high reliance on our devices to store our memory, uh, for us that we don't have to remember. We don't have to exercise that part of our brain. Meaning, I mean, it keeps our to-dos, right? Our phones, it keeps our schedules. I mean, how many phone numbers do your listeners— did they used to know when they were growing up?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Like all of them. And how many phone numbers do we know currently? Like you count on one hand, right? Yeah. And not, not that I want to memorize 300 phone numbers, but it should be very concerning. We've lost the ability to remember one phone number or a PIN number or a passcode or something we just read. You know, I believe two of the most costly words in life are "I forgot." I forgot to do it. I forgot that meeting. I forgot what I was going to say. I forgot that conversation. I forgot that person's name. You know, every single time we say those words, we lose time, we lose trust, we lose opportunity. We can lose a sale. On the other side, a great memory is a magnifier. When you keep you can easily remember names and faces, client information, product information, um, what you've read, what you heard. Life gets so much easier. And it's important now because everyone listening, it's not like it was hundreds of years ago where we're out in fields or on assembly lines where it's more brute strength. Today you're compensated for your brain strength. It's not no longer your muscle power. I mean, it's very important to have muscle power, but it's our mind power. And the faster you can learn, the faster you could earn. Because knowledge today is not just power, it's, it's profit. And so the largest chapter in Limitless is on memory improvement because I feel like it's the foundation for, for all learning.

And what are some things— and obviously I want to encourage people, get the book Limitless that Jim Kwik has written. You can simply go to amazon.com, bookstores nationwide. But as you're talking about this, what's maybe one thing we can start doing to start to improve our memory?

Yeah. So let's, let's take a specific example. You know, when people come to me and they say they want a better memory, it's like somebody going to a coach and say, I want to be better at sports. Like, what sport specifically? Right. So let's say it's names and faces. You know, it's important, obviously, because if you have any relationship with a person, it's hard to show someone you're going to care for their future, their business, their health, whatever you have to offer them if you don't care enough just to remember them. Remembering people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Simple acronym like MOM, you know, the mom. I wrote this chapter in Greece because I found out there was a goddess of memory in ancient Greece and her kids were the 9 Muses of art, science, and literature. But it's interesting that the mother was, you know, was memory. And so remember MOM, it's another acronym. Let's say you want to remember names and faces and you're normally not very good at it, but there was a suitcase. A fictional suitcase of $1 million cash for you or your favorite charity if you just remember the name of the next person you meet. How many people listening are going to remember that person's name? A whole lot, right? So it had nothing to do with your capabilities. So as a memory coach, I'm going to call people on their BS, their belief systems, right? And had nothing to do with your capability. It has everything to do with the first M in MOM, which is your motivation. So something very simple like asking yourself, let's say you want to remember names, just take in a split second before you're introduced. Why do I want to remember this person? Maybe it's to show the person some respect or get a referral. Practice these things I learned, you know, on Josh's podcast. Because if you can't come up with a reason, you won't get the reward. As reasons reap results, things have to go from your head to your heart to your hands, right? If you have a goal in your mind, in your head, but you're not acting with your hands, you're procrastinating. Check the second H, which is your heart. Right, which is a symbol of emotions. And we are emotional creatures. Like, we're not logical. We're definitely biological. You think about dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. We are this neurotransmitter. We are this chemical feeling soup, right? But we need to have a why, and we need to start there. So just ask yourself why. The O in MOM stands for observation. A lot of people, they blame their retention when they forget something, and it's not often their retention. It's their attention. The art of memory is the art of attention. Yeah. And so even like a lot of times they're not really listening. They're thinking about what they're going to say. Right. So they're not even forgetting their name. They're just not really hearing the name. And if you did this little like mind experiment, think about the word listen and picture it, you know, in the whiteboard of your mind. And if you scramble the letters around, it spells another word perfectly. The word listen, when you scramble the letters, spells the word silent, right? And just being present, you know, you have this incredible supercomputer, 86 billion brain cells, neurons. It doesn't come with an owner's manual. It's not user-friendly. It could remember one name, but we're not often because we're not really present. And then the last M in MOM, you have the, the motivation, the observation, are the methods. And so something simple to do that everyone could do when they're meeting somebody for the first time is take the name and turn it into a simple picture. Because we think in pictures, right? When you get on an airplane, no longer does it say fasten your seatbelt or, you know, or something, you know, like no smoking. There's a picture, right? And a picture is worth a thousand words. And your visual cortex takes up a lot more real estate in your brain. And we tend to remember what we see, right? You see a face, you remember the face. You go to someone and say, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say the opposite. You never go to someone and say, I remember your name, but I forgot your face. Forgot your face, right? And there's a, there's a proverb that says, 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 it. What I see I remember. I saw the face, I remember it. And what you do, going through the power of practice, you really understand by doing. And so if you tend to remember what you see, my tip would be try seeing what you want to remember. So you meet somebody named Mike, and for a split second imagine them jumping on the table and singing karaoke on a microphone. And it sounds so childish, but who are the fastest learners, right? Children.

Yeah.

And they use their imagination. They use emotion. You mean someone named Carol? And imagine for a split second they just, they just bust into Christmas carols, right? And, you know, a person's name is Mary. I imagine them carrying two lambs from Mary Had a Little Lamb, or I imagine them in a wedding dress. Someone's name happens to be Mark. I imagine myself grabbing a Sharpie marker and putting a checkmark on their forehead. And even when it doesn't work, Josh, it still works. Because it gets you to focus on the person and it gets you to focus on the name. You know, this simple technique is something that overcomes what I call the 6-second syndrome. Somebody tells you something or you read something and you have 6 seconds to do something with that info. Or once a handshake breaks, the name is— it just disappears into the ether. And it's a means to an end because once you know the person's name happens to be Mark, then, you know, then the picture disappears. But when you're saying goodbye 30 minutes later, you remember, oh, who is this person? We put a check mark on his forehead. What's his name Mark, right? So it's just a kind of little memory hack that helps, goes a long way.

That's so good. You know, one of the things I'd love to ask you about is, and I know you've done some, some research on this and read some studies, what are some of the best herbs, vitamins, supplements, foods, things that people can do to optimize their neurological health and memory and focus?

Yeah, so there, I mentioned there are 10, there are 10 levers that really can move the needle for that two-thirds to improve your brain health and performance. Uh, one of them is a good brain diet. So there's a whole area of science called neuro nutrition. And your brain is only 2% of your body mass, but it actually requires 20% of the nutrients, the energy. It's an energy hog, right? And while your brain is part of your body, it also requires different nutrients than the rest of your body. And I always prefer people get it from foods, you know, good whole foods, local, organic, as best as clean as you could do. Um, but if we don't get it from our diet, then you could supplement it, you know, obviously also as well. So some of my favorite brain foods, and I'll show people how to remember it. Have you ever gone to the, like, the store, the market, and you went, you go to buy like one thing and you come back with maybe a bag or two, and when you're home you realize that you forgot that one thing? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So this would be a good memory exercise. One of my beliefs is that there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's a trained memory and an untrained memory, right? And we need to exercise our memory. So it's a wonderful opportunity to take the stairs., right, to do the actual mental calisthenics to memorize a list. So I'll give everyone like 10 of my favorite brain foods and then we could talk about supplements. And just to remember it, there, I mentioned I wrote the memory chapter in Greece. There's an ancient memory technique, 2,500 years old, where they would remember, like orators remember their speeches or poetry based on placing information around locations are very familiar with, like their home, right? And people could do this in their home, in their office, their school, the local mall. And you're taking like 10 places that you're very familiar with and putting the 10 things you want to remember in those places using your imagination and emotion. So for example, maybe everyone could do this. You could do this with me. Yeah. So everyone touch the top of your head right now and say top. That's your verbal memory, top. And we're just take 10 places on your body. Second place is your nose. So you say nose for your verbal memory. Third place, just going down your face, mouth. Fourth, let's go to the side. Tell everyone listening, go touch your ears. Your ears. And five is your throat. All right, so we're exercising our memory even doing this. So we're not just hearing about it, we're doing it. Uh, six are your shoulders. Everyone touch your shoulders and say shoulders.

Shoulders.

Seven is your collarbone, your collar. Collar. 8, just wiggle your fingers. If you're not watching this on video, I'm just wiggling my fingers. 8 is fingers. 9 is your belly. And then let's say 10 is your bottom. All right, so that's 10 places. And now what we're going to do is I'm going to share with you 10 of my favorite foods to boost your brain health. Um, the first, and we're going to put it in those 10 places, are avocados, right? The monounsaturated fats, good for the brain. Your brain's mostly fat. So just imagine avocados, using it as a hair or scalp conditioner. You're putting guacamole on your head and it would never happen, right? But because you could not just hear it, you could see it and kind of feel it. It becomes more, you're using more of your nervous system to memorize it. And just very quickly, the second place is your nose, right? And the second brain food are blueberries. Berries are incredibly neuroprotective, right? High in antioxidants. So I call them brain berries, but imagine blueberries coming out of your nose. What does that smell like? Use all your senses. What does that feel like? If you ever saw somebody and their blueberries were coming out of the nose, you would never forget that. The third place on your body, everyone, was your mouth. And, um, I like broccoli as a brain food. Yeah, imagine broccoli stuck in your teeth. Now everyone's bio-individual, has different food sensitivities, and, and so keep that, you know, in, in mind. You could do microbiome tests and nutrient profile, but imagine a big stalk of broccoli stuck in your teeth. Right. The sulforaphane is good for, especially when it's sprouted, is good for cognitive health. So you taste the broccoli in your teeth. All right. All right. The fourth place was our ears. So everyone touch your ears. Fourth brain food, olive oil. So just imagine you're cleaning your ears with olive oil or you have olive earrings, right? There's limitless examples. Just, and if you can't imagine it, just imagine you can imagine it. All right. Five was your throat. Throat. And, um, eggs, if your diet allows. The choline in eggs, precursor to acetylcholine, which is good for cognitive health. Imagine a hard-boiled egg in your throat, all right? It's just kind of stuck there. 6 are your shoulders. I'm a fan of green leafy vegetables. And again, some people can't readily digest it as easily, but just imagine shoulder pads made out of kale and spinach. You look, look to your left and look at your right, you have shoulder pads made of kale and spinach. All right, 7 is your collar. And, uh, let's talk about salmon or sardines, right? The, the, the fatty fishes that are high in omega-3s, your, your DHAs, maybe wild-caught salmon. Maybe you have a necklace made out of salmon sushi and maybe make it like a week old. So you really, you really use more of your senses. What does that smell like? What does that feel like? Imagine a necklace made out of salmon sushi. All right, we're almost done. Uh, 8th place are your fingers. So we go to your fingers. Eighth brain food, turmeric. And so just imagine that golden powder all over your fingers. You just can't get rid of it. It's all over your, your fingernails, your cuticles. The curcumin is, is the, the active ingredient in turmeric. It could be a very anti-inflammatory. Uh, 9 is your belly. Uh, good snack food that I love are walnuts. So imagine eating walnuts out of your belly button. Walnuts are high in vitamin E, neuroprotective, but you walnuts coming out of your belly button, you're eating them, something silly like that. And then finally, the 10th place is your bottom. Everyone touch your bottom. And, uh, 10th brain food, dark chocolate. Um, I don't even need to hear what people are saying or seeing back there. Um, but dark chocolate, non-milk chocolate. Um, generally what's good for your mood tends to be good for your mind. Yeah. So now, uh, so imagine we're gonna have a limitless, like, brain cocktail party, Josh calls you up and says, hey, while you're out, can you just stop by the market, the health food store, and just pick up these 10 quick things? And you're like, oh, I'm driving, I can't write it down. Or you're in the shower, or can't— you can never— you have these ideas, you can never write them down, right? I don't know why you pick up the phone in the shower. But, um, now you just walk in the aisles and you just— you have your grocery list because it's on your body. So on top of your head, you have the first brain food, which is— which is what? The, the avocados.

I, I, I want to prove that I can do this now quick, Jim, because this is amazing. I mean, we've, you know, this was good. Yeah, this was, this is fantastic. So we've got avocados here. I remember that because that's what we're, you know, scrubbing into our head. I know we've got, uh, we've gotten the nose, so we got blueberries. I imagine blueberries coming out of the nose. We got mouth because broccoli is stuck in your teeth. We got olives. I remember that cuz actually there's a lot of remedies that I have people do with olive oil and garlic oil. That sort of thing is the base. And then we're going down to the throat. And that's where an egg is caught, you know, in the throat. The next is the, the shoulder pads of, we talked about kale and spinach, the greens there. We talked about the collar, which was salmon. Yeah, that have been there. Pretty good.

Yeah.

And then we went down to the hands. We talked about turmeric. By the way, I've had this happen plenty of times. I use turmeric a lot, so I've had the orange or yellow stain of that curcumin on my hands. The next we have belly button, which is walnut. We talked about there, right in the— and then we talked about the, the butt, the glutes there, the behind for, uh, for dark chocolate. So I mean, this is amazing. I mean, it really is, uh, such a great tool to learn fast.

And people could use this anywhere. They could use their body list every day and reuse it. They could use their home and go in the kitchen and say, okay, the microwave is the first place, the stovetop is the second, refrigerator, just go clockwise. The refrigerator is my third place, the dishwasher is the fourth, and the sink is the fifth. And people could use this to even memorize a speech. I work with a lot of actors or TED speakers and teaching them the key points. And a lot of people have a fear of public speaking where that fear stems from is like, I'm going to forget what I have to say, or somebody's asked me a question, I'm going to go answer it. I'm not going to remember where I was. But here you just walk around your home or your office or the mall and you can make these, you know, there's no limit to the amount of locations you could use. And just using this principle of PIE, P-I-E, you have a P stands for place, map out your places. The I is imagine, imagine what you want to remember as a picture because we'll remember it better, like with faces. And then the E is entwine. Entwine is just you're putting the two things together. And what are you putting together? You're putting that image with the place. And yeah, that's a wonderful shortcut because most people, what's the alternative? They would have to repeat it over and over and over again.

Yeah.

Right. And that takes a lot of time and it's pretty boring, you know. And so, yeah, that's just one key to be able to do it. So these are some of my favorite brain foods. Now, if you're not getting this in your diet, then maybe you need to start with supplements. Then we could talk about, you know, nutrients.

What are a few of your favorites? Maybe pick 3 or 4 or 5. Now, if you have an actor, go with whatever it is, but I would say that— yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a few of those.

Yeah, for supplement— for supplementation, then we can talk about nootropics. Like, if you're not getting the choline in eggs, you could supplement with choline, right? If you're not getting the eating the, the flax or the, the— you're the fish, you get your— you could supplement with, uh, you know, omega-3 fatty acids, you know. So all the vitamins, the B vitamins are very important for your brain. Magnesium— every physiological function, you know, relies on magnesium. But when we're going into nootropics or nootropics, that was a new chapter in the book. And I put everything at brainnutrition.com. So just, I put what my— and I link everything to human studies. And again, I'm not a medical doctor or a nutritionist, but it's just been my experience. You need to take care of the hardware, right? What you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. The nootropics are more— I would define them as more substances that can enhance your cognitive function. Particularly your, your executive functioning, your memory, your creativity, your, your motivation. So in no particular orders, ashwagandha, right, it's an adaptogenic herb, improves mental and physical resilience. It may help reduce stress and anxiety because chronic stress will shrink the brain, right? You're in fight or flight, holds you hostage in your survival brain. But, you know, you can't get to your executive function, your problem solving, You know, those kind of areas. I talk about in the book a whole coffee fruit extract. Now, this is the whole fruit from the coffee plant that's usually the byproduct that's usually discarded, but it could be a strong antioxidant and have a positive impact on your cognitive function. Phosphatidylserine is a phospholipid that is an integral part to your brain cell, the membrane. Has shown to improve memory, learning, cognitive function. L-theanine, it's amino acid. It's often found on, as I'm drinking here, green tea. It's a popular nootropic or nootropic. It helps promote relaxation without the drowsiness, and it can enhance brain function. Another favorite is bacopa. It's an herb used in Ayurvedic medicine. It could improve cognition, memory, Rhodiola is another one, Scandinavian herb that's been shown to reduce mental fatigue, improve cognitive function. One of my favorites, go-to, is something that's used a lot for people who exercise, is creatine. You know, it's naturally produced in our bodies. It's found predominantly in like meat and fish. But if you don't— that's not part of your diet, you can supplement with it. It plays a crucial role in energy metabolism. There are a number of studies that show that creatine supplements supplementation, like maybe like you're doing 5 grams or whatever, um, could show help improve cognitive function, especially in tasks that require, uh, short-term memory and, uh, and quick thinking. And it's also great for, for energy, right? Not just your, your body energy, but obviously your brain's part of your, your, your, your body also as well. Um, we could go on and on. Curcumin, we mentioned as part of turmeric, which helps with anti-inflammatory. Lion's mane mushroom, It's a unique nootropic. It has very— it has strong neuroprotective effects. Research has shown it helps to stimulate the synthesis of something called nerve growth factor, which can enhance cognition by reducing inflammation, local inflammation, and promoting overall brain health. Ginkgo biloba for blood flow. I mean, we put all of them there again. We put a list at brainnutrition.com in terms of what I'm currently excited about and link to all the studies and people could check out more there. Or it's definitely heavily researched, cited in the book.

It's so great. Well, Jim, I've loved talking to you. You know, I think that as we've talked about, you know, as, as we age, one of the most important organ— or our most important organ is our brain. And if we're going to live a long, healthy life, it's really important that we take care of our brain. I want to encourage everybody, check out, uh, Jim's book Limitless. I love these exercises. I, I've read part of your book, Jim. I may go back and read the whole thing because, you know, I think about this. I I read probably, I don't know if you count audiobooks, probably 24 books a year. I do probably want, you know, just both reading. I like reading. And so, but being able to remember everything and even if it's 10% better, I mean, that's a lot. But if it's 20% or 30% or 50% better, in a lot of cases, it's worth so much. I want to encourage everybody, hey, check out Jim's book, Limitless. It's at Amazon, Barnes Noble, bookstores nationwide. And, and hey, try that exercise at home.

The 10. Yeah, I would love to get feedback from your community. If I could challenge everyone, take a small, simple step because I remember going back to knowledge is not power. It has the potential when we act on it, it becomes power. Take a small, simple step is maybe, maybe take a screenshot of wherever you're consuming this conversation, this episode. And, um, and post it. Tag Josh, tag myself on social media, and share with us, um, one thing you're gonna do for a better brain. Or share with us the— how many of the 10 things you remembered, and do you remember it backwards? Like, I imagine even— and, and, and if you really want to go the extra mile, teach it to somebody else. Because one of the fastest ways of learning something is to teach it to somebody. They call it the explanation effect. When you learn something with the intention of teaching it to somebody else,, you're going to learn it so much better. So you could post it, tag us so we get to see it. I'll repost, you know, some of my favorites, and I'll actually gift a few copies of Limitless to your community as a thank you for having me on the show. And I just want to remind everyone, you are the— your brain controls everything. The reason I'm wearing a brain on my shirt, or if you see me in photos pointing to my brain, is just what we see, we take care of, right? You see your hair, your skin, your car, your clothes. It's in your constant awareness. So you see if it's deteriorating or getting dirty or messy. And but you don't see the thing that controls everything, which is our brain. So I'm always wearing a brain or pointing to my brain. And I want to remind you, you are the— you're the pilot of your brain. You don't have to be the passenger. Right. And I believe there's a version of your brain. There's a version of yourself that's patiently waiting. And the goal is we show up every single day until we're introduced.

That's so good. Well, everybody, thanks so much for watching. Jim, thanks so much for the kindness of and the wisdom you shared today. So, appreciate it. Hey, everybody, thanks for watching another episode. Hey, make sure to go and follow Jim as well on Instagram and Facebook. He's got some great posts there and he also has a lot of great videos on YouTube. Encourage you to check him out and his book. Thanks again, everybody. And if you're watching on YouTube, hey, please go in the comment section and let us know the biggest thing you learned from Jim today. Thanks, everybody.