16-05-2021-043351Limitless-Jim -Kwik

Wait . . . what?

You’ve never seen that scene in a superhero movie, right? There are some reasons for that. One is that it would be a terrible story. Another is that, regardless of the darkness in their pasts or the moral conflicts they might be facing, superheroes don’t become true superheroes by giving in to limiting beliefs. Superman doesn’t think that, maybe on a good day, he might be able to leap a tall building or, maybe, you know, a couple of stories at least. Tony Stark doesn’t think, “This Iron Man suit is probably going to fail me at the worst possible time because I’m inherently a screw-up.” Captain Marvel doesn’t break through our atmosphere and suddenly start thinking, “I’m not sure I have the emotional capacity to fly solo through space.” They have superpowers, and any sense of restriction be damned.

And you know what? You have superpowers too. How do you realize them? You begin with your mindset.

FINDING MY ROGER BANNISTER

When I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10 years old, we had a big family reunion. There were a couple dozen of us around a huge table in a big, busy restaurant. It was a Saturday night, so the place was packed, with the waitstaff ping-ponging from table to table as quickly as they could.

A few minutes after we all gathered, our waitress came over to take our order. As you can imagine, this was a lengthy process. About halfway through, the waitress came around to ask me what I wanted to eat and drink. It was then that I realized that she hadn’t been writing down anything my relatives had ordered. I found this extremely curious. There was something like 25 of us, and I’d seen her serving other customers, so I knew we weren’t her only table. How was she possibly going to remember everything we’d ordered? I told her what I wanted and then watched her carefully as she made her way around the rest of the table.

I did not have a high level of confidence that my meal was going to remotely resemble what I’d requested. Even at that age, I had a healthy amount of skepticism. Not because I was a negative person or because I didn’t have faith in people, but rather that I needed to

see anything out of the ordinary before I believed it was possible. In this case, I figured that, at best, the waitress would get most of our orders correct, but she’d wind up putting them down in the wrong places, and we’d find ourselves trading plates all across the table.

Well, first our drinks came, and everyone got exactly what they wanted, even the cousin who wanted no ice in her Coke and another who’d requested that her drink come with a twist of lemon, a twist of lime, and two cherries. Okay, I thought, that was pretty good. But there’s a lot more to come. A few minutes later, the salads came out, and again everything was perfect. The people who wanted their dressing on the side got it that way, the people who wanted their dressing tossed with their salads got that, and everyone got the dressing they’d asked to get. My skepticism was being tested. And then the main courses were delivered. Not one mistake—and there were some crazy special requests. Everything was cooked the way we wanted, and all of the side dishes were the right ones.

I dove into my meal at that point, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what the waitress had accomplished. At this age, I’d only just begun to read competently, and my brain injury had caused me all kinds of learning challenges. And yet here was someone who had shown me that our brains are capable of far more than I would have imagined.

That waitress was my Roger Bannister. Bannister was a track star in the 1950s. In the early years of Bannister’s career, it was widely assumed that it was physically impossible for an athlete to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. The feeling was that our bodies would break down from the effort before the time could be achieved. Then, on May 6, 1954, Bannister ran a mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds, proving that the 4-minute barrier was indeed breakable. What is most interesting to me is that less than two months later someone broke Bannister’s record, and then that record was broken, and then that one. The times have been dropping ever since.

What Bannister did was show that this barrier wasn’t in fact a barrier at all. That was what this waitress showed me. Through her, I saw that what I’d perceived my brain’s capacity to be was so much less than what it really was. As you know, I continued to struggle with learning for many years, but from the moment of that dinner I had a model for what was possible.

The waitress in this way was limitless. She demonstrated something in front of me that I would never in a million years have thought was possible. I never got to know her, but I’m forever grateful because what she did for me personally was to permanently change my perceptions of my own restrictions. She altered my mindset. It was impossible for me to buy into the notion that I could expect to accomplish only a modest amount with my brain when I knew that others could achieve so much more. I just needed to find a method.

I’m going to share much of that method with you in this book. At its core is one fundamental concept: unlimiting. The key to making yourself limitless is unlearning false assumptions. So often, we don’t accomplish something because we’ve convinced ourselves that we can’t do it. Let’s go back to Roger Bannister for a moment. Every day before May 6, 1954, people were absolutely certain that a sub-four- minute mile was beyond the range of human capabilities. Forty-six days after Bannister did it, someone else beat his time, and more than 1,400 racers have followed them. Running a mile in less than four minutes is still an extraordinary feat—but it is not an impossible feat. Once that “barrier” was broken, many achieved it.

So, how do you face down limiting beliefs?

WHAT LIMITING BELIEFS DO TO US

Limiting beliefs are often revealed in our self-talk, that inner conversation that focuses on what you’re convinced you can’t do rather than what you already excel at and what you’re going to continue to achieve today and into the future. How often do you stop yourself from attempting to do something or from pursuing a dream because that voice convinces you that it is beyond your reach? If this sounds like you, you are very far from alone, but you’re also not doing yourself any favors.

“We come into this world not knowing if life is hard or easy, if money is scarce or abundant, if we’re important or unimportant. We

look at two people who know everything: our parents,”1 said belief change expert Shelly Lefkoe in our podcast interview. Parents are our first teachers, and although they probably meant us no harm, we

still come away from our childhoods with the limiting beliefs they unconsciously instilled in us.

Limiting beliefs can stop you in your tracks even when you’re doing something at which you normally excel. Have you ever had the experience of being in a pressure situation where you need to do something that typically comes easily to you—writing a memo or doing a quick calculation, for example—but the intensity causes you to doubt yourself so much that you fail at this task? That’s a limiting belief setting you back. If you could just get out of your head, you’d have no trouble getting the job done, but your inner voice confounds you.

Now, take that situation and extend it to an entire segment of your life. Your career aspirations, perhaps, or your ability to make friends. If your limiting beliefs are in control, you could find yourself mired in underachievement, either wondering why you never really get ahead or convinced that you don’t deserve it.

Alexis, who cofounded Kwik Learning with me, struggled with learning as a child much like I did, but for very different reasons. She was born in South Korea to entrepreneurial parents who struggled in business. They didn’t have a lot of money, but always worked hard to make ends meet. While she had a roof over her head, her family of four lived in a one-room basement in Korea. Their second business had just failed when they received a letter from the United States saying their visa application had been approved—they had filed seven years earlier. On the verge of desperation, her family thought this was a new chance, so they borrowed the equivalent of $2,000 and left for America.

Alexis didn’t know a word of English when she arrived. It was total culture shock—she didn’t know what was being said around her, and the cultural norms were entirely different. Her parents didn’t speak English either, so they were all struggling to understand their new world.

Alexis enrolled in school near her new home. She was a shy and introverted student, and, because she didn’t know the language, she often sat alone at the lunch table or ate in a bathroom stall just to avoid feeling like an outcast.

It took Alexis six years to be able to truly understand English, and both the kids and the teachers in her school didn’t understand why she struggled for so long. After a couple of years, classmates started to criticize her for being a slow learner. “What’s wrong with you?” “Are you stupid? “You’re weird,” were phrases she heard frequently as a child.

Her difficulties in school even extended to physical education, the one area where she ostensibly didn’t need to use many words. She remembers sitting on the bleachers repeatedly copying out the words, “I will bring my gym clothes to class.” But she had no idea what she was writing, and no one managed to communicate to her that she needed to bring a change of clothing.

By the time she was in her early twenties, Alexis had a hard time reading a book from front to back. She battled with her internal voices whenever she attempted to learn. One overarching voice constantly criticized and doubted her abilities, while another small voice questioned that critic. Something inside her couldn’t fully accept the notion that she was “dumb.” Her parents worked hard to give her a second chance, and she couldn’t let them down. While there were moments where she felt she wasn’t good enough to do anything special in her life, there were also moments where she was sure there had to be more to life than merely accepting her circumstances.

If Alexis allowed those external voices to shape her reality, then it would’ve stopped her in her tracks. She wouldn’t have searched for solutions to her problems. Instead, she looked for answers by observing and learning from others. She started wondering what they were doing differently to find success and happiness. She wanted to know if it was sheer luck and genius, or if there was a method behind it. In her quest to learn how to be successful, she ended up in one of my early classes. She wasn’t sure what she was getting into, but knew she wanted something different for herself— she needed to feel a sense of hope.

On day one, we covered memory. It was eight hours of intense training, but at the end of the session, Alexis felt refreshed and even excited about what she was learning. “How else can I use my brain?”

she wondered. For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel slow and she felt excited about learning.

Day two was all about speed reading. She wasn’t initially excited about this because of her previous challenges. But when Alexis learned the smart reading habits and went through the speedreading exercises, a lightbulb turned on. She suddenly saw the potential—and even the fun—of reading. She realized she was not too slow or stupid to understand; she was just never shown how to learn and use the super-computer between her ears. As she experienced the power of learning, the years of negative self-talk and limiting beliefs took a backseat in her mind.

After that class, Alexis read a complete book for the first time and was blown away by how much she understood, how much she remembered, and how much she liked the experience.

It was a huge turning point in her life. She went from a limited mindset, believing that “things are the way they are,” to knowing that she could change and shape her mind to reach her goals. For the first time in her life, she began to believe in herself and imagine what might be possible.

Today, Alexis doesn’t shy away from learning something new. She doesn’t feel inadequate if she doesn’t know something. She goes out to find answers and applies them. Out of her passion for learning, she also started Kwik Learning Online with me to share the transformation she experienced with others in every country in the world.

In their book Mequilibrium, authors Jan Bruce, Dr. Andrew Shatté, and Dr. Adam Perlman call these kinds of beliefs “iceberg beliefs” because of how many of them lie beneath the surface of our subconscious. “Iceberg beliefs are deeply rooted and powerful, and they fuel our emotions,” they say in the book. “The more entrenched an iceberg is, the more havoc it wreaks on your life. . . creating your schedule chaos, getting in the way of successfully sticking to a diet, or holding you back from seizing opportunities.”

And, perhaps most significantly, they say, “If we get a handle on our icebergs, we gain an enormous amount of control over our

She adds: “The inner critic isn’t harmless. It inhibits you, limits you, and stops you from pursuing the life you truly want to live. It robs you of peace of mind and emotional well-being and, if left unchecked long enough, it can even lead to serious mental health problems like

depression or anxiety.”3

Let’s revisit our failed superhero from the beginning of this chapter. She certainly had the motivation to save the day. And she certainly had the methods to save the day. But what she didn’t have was the mindset. Her inner critic convinced her that she wasn’t good enough, so she sat on the sidelines feeling sorry for herself instead of taking care of business. Certainly, one takeaway from this story is that our failed superhero blew it. She flopped at a critical time because she couldn’t get out of her own head.

But there’s another hugely important component to this story: our superhero had everything inside of her to succeed. If only she’d been able to prevail over the beliefs that were holding her back, her extraordinary talents would have shone through.

That’s how important it is to conquer your limiting beliefs.

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE A GENIUS?

When you think of geniuses, who are the first people that come to mind? I’m guessing Einstein and Shakespeare are on your shortlist. Others might include Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Marie Curie, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. These names pop into many people’s heads because each of them was extraordinary in the kinds of intelligence we tend to equate with genius. But was LeBron James on your list? How about Beyoncé? Or Oprah? Or you?

It wouldn’t be surprising if you didn’t include the latter names on your list. Most of us tend to equate genius with one particular measurement of intelligence: IQ. People with outsize IQs are geniuses, and people with lesser IQs can be good or even great at something, but they aren’t considered geniuses.

If this sounds like your kind of thinking, you’re far from alone in defining genius far, far too narrowly. I would even take this to the

point of suggesting that most people define genius in this way. But there are two problems with that. One is that it prevents you from appreciating the genius a wide variety of people hold. The other is that it might prevent you from identifying the genius in yourself.

There are multiple forms of genius. Various experts differ on the number, but it is commonly agreed that genius expresses itself in one of four manners. Here’s a way of looking at it that has been around for thousands of years:

Dynamo genius: Those who express their genius through creativity and ideas. Shakespeare was a dynamo genius because of his brilliance at inventing stories that told us so much about ourselves. Galileo was a dynamo genius because of the way he could see things that others couldn’t see when he looked up at the skies. Dynamo geniuses are those we most commonly think of when we think of geniuses.

Blaze genius: Those whose genius becomes clear through their interaction with others. Oprah Winfrey is a blaze genius because of her extraordinary ability to connect with the hearts, minds, and souls of a wide range of individuals. Malala Yousafzai’s blaze genius expresses itself through her ability to make her story relatable to people all around the globe. Blaze geniuses tend to be master communicators.

Tempo genius: Those whose genius expresses itself through their ability to see the big picture and stay the course. Nelson Mandela was a tempo genius because he was capable of seeing the wisdom of his vision even in the face of overwhelming odds. Mother Teresa’s tempo genius allowed her to imagine better circumstances for those around her even at the darkest times. Tempo geniuses tend to understand the long view in ways that most of those around them cannot.

Steel genius: Those who are brilliant at sweating the small stuff and doing something with the details that others missed or couldn’t envision. Sergey Brin used his genius at seeing the potential of large amounts of data to co-found Google. If you read the book Moneyball, then you know that Billy Beane and

his staff redefined baseball through their genius at crunching data. Steel geniuses love getting all the information they can get and have a vision for doing something with that information that most others miss.

KWIK START

What would you say is your genius? Write it down.

There’s a very good chance that your own genius is a combination of two or more of these. Very few of us are only data people or are only adept at being empathetic. But what’s important for you to understand here is that genius extends far beyond your ability to excel at academics or recite the periodic table on command—and that you have genius inside of you.

If you find that last statement surprising, you might want to go back and reread some of the earlier chapters in this book. Making yourself limitless is all about unleashing your innate genius. Maybe you aren’t the dynamo of Shakespeare or the blaze of Oprah, but there is some combination of genius inside of you that is either waiting to express itself or waiting to express itself more. The key is letting it free.

IT ISN’T ONLY IN YOUR HEAD

Before I give you some tools to help you shift toward a more positive mindset, let’s just talk for a minute about how important positive thinking is. There are clear connections between positive thinking and physical health. In a Johns Hopkins study, Dr. Lisa Yanek found that “positive people from the general population were 13 percent less likely than their negative counterparts to have a heart attack or

other coronary event.”4

Meanwhile, the Mayo Clinic notes that “The positive thinking that usually comes with optimism is a key part of effective stress