Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

by Jim Kwik

Also, remember that you are not your mistakes. Making a mistake doesn’t mean anything about you as a person. It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that you’re inherently worthless, but you make mistakes; mistakes don’t make you. Place them under your feet and use them as stepping stones to rise to the next level. It’s not how we make mistakes, but how we deal with them that defines us. New belief: There is no such thing as failure. Only failure to learn.

Put another way, knowledge is important, but it is “the performing of some action” that is required to make it powerful. This is where we get stuck as a culture. As discussed, we’re deluged with information on a daily basis. We have more access to knowledge than we have ever had in the history of humankind, and yet this glut of information makes it more and more difficult to act.

Information overload and analysis paralysis. We need to act on the knowledge, this is what makes it powerful.

I quickly realized that possession of knowledge wasn’t going to differentiate me from the people around me—it was how I used my knowledge that would.

Knowledge is not power. It only has the potential to be power. You can read this book and learn everything in it, but if you don’t take it and apply the knowledge, it will be useless. All the books, podcasts, seminars, online programs, and inspiring social media posts in the world won’t work until you put your knowledge into action. It’s easy to talk about what we learn, but I want to challenge you not to talk about it, but to show what you learned. It’s better well done than well said. Don’t promise, prove. Your results will speak for themselves.

Learning was hard for her, but she figured out how to work around her disability. After all, it’s not how smart you are, but how you are smart.

The truth is that learning won’t always be easy, but the effort pays dividends. In fact, learning should be at least a little uncomfortable; otherwise you’re mostly reinforcing what you already know.

The key is taking small, simple steps. Think about a stonecutter. The stonecutter may sit there and hammer away at his block of stone for what feels like an eternity, making only small chips and dents here and there. But in one moment, the stone will crack open. Was it the one time that did it? No—it was all the sustained effort that prepared the stone to split. Approach your learning like a stonecutter. It will require you to cultivate patience, to have a positive attitude, and to be adaptive to your own needs.

Know that it won’t be hard, but it will require effort—though perhaps not as much as you think. The key is consistency. You must have the patience to consistently come back at it again and again. When you do, you will not only reap the rewards of your hard-earned knowledge, but you’ll be a better person for having cultivated the tenacity to keep trying.

Sometimes it is hard to learn new things. What’s more accurate is to understand that learning is a set of methods, a process that can certainly be easier when you know how to learn.

When you learn new ways how to learn, the challenge of learning new things can be fun, e...

“I act that way because I want to give the people who are watching permission to be themselves. The biggest travesty in the world is people preventing and limiting themselves from expressing who they really are because they’re afraid of what other people think.”

The purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern. . . . How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out. . . . The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.

Jim Carey’s mission

The fastest learners on the planet are children, and that’s partly because they don’t care what others think of them. They have no shame around failing. They will fall 300 times and get up 300 times in the course of learning to walk, and don’t feel embarrassed; they just know they want to walk. As we get older, we have a harder time staying this open.

Part of being limitless is learning to let go of the fear of criticism from other people. History is littered with examples of those who overcame the negative opinions of the people around them.

Here’s the truth: Creating the life you want can be scary. But you know what’s scarier? Regret. One day we will take our final breaths and not one of other people’s opinions or your fears will matter. What will matter is how we lived. Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. People will doubt you and criticize you no matter what you do. You will never know your true potential until you break the unfair judgements you place on yourself. Don’t allow other people’s opinions and expectations to run or ruin your life. New belief: It’s not your job to like, love, or respect me. It’s mine.

Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. If you’re not putting yourself out there, I don’t care about your feedback.

In The Talent Code, author Daniel Coyle delves into whether talent is innate or whether it can be developed. He argues “greatness isn’t born, it’s grown.” Through deep practice, ignition, and master coaching, anyone can develop a talent so deep that it looks like genius.

Find a way to put something you’ve recently learned (even today) into action. Notice the difference it makes when you turn knowledge into power.

Contrary to popular belief, like your mindset, motivation is not fixed. No one has a set level of motivation. And when people say they are unmotivated, it’s not completely true. They could have a high level of motivation to stay in bed and watch television.

Motivation also doesn’t mean you must enjoy something that you need to do.

Finally, motivation is not something you wake up with or not. We put ourselves in a trance when we say, “I don’t have any motivation.” Motivation is not something you have; it’s something you do. And it’s entirely sustainable. Unlike a warm bath, it’s not something that you experience for a moment and then lose unless you heat it up again. Motivation isn’t derived from a seminar that temporarily pumps you up. It’s a process. And since it’s a strategy, you have control over it and can create it consistently by following the right recipe.

Motivation = Purpose × Energy × S3

When you combine purpose, energy, and small simple steps (S3), you get sustainable motivation. And the ultimate form of motivation is the state of flow. Think about it as energy management. Creating it, investing it, and ...

The longer you go without sleep, the harder it becomes to maintain a sense of reality—or motivation, for that matter. Lack of sleep compromises all of your cognitive skills, your focus, your memory, and your overall brain health. A common contributing factor for depression and many mood disorders is lack of sleep.

During my most difficult moments, I’ve asked myself why I continue to do what I do. Why struggle when I could easily tell myself I don’t have the energy for this?

I’ve learned there is a gift in most challenges.

I’ve had to become really clear on my purpose, my identity, my values, and my reasons for doing what I do every day. When you don’t sleep, and you have a very limited amount of energy and focus, you don’t waste it. You prioritize and get crystal clear about your commitments and why you are making them. All of those choices have led to inexhaustible motivation.

If, Sinek explains, you can articulate the belief that is driving you (your why), people will want what you are offering.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, so it follows that if you don’t know why you do what you do, how will anyone else?”

Simon Sinek — Start with Why

Do you know why it was important to memorize the periodic table or historic dates? If you don’t, you probably don’t remember them.

Explaining WHY is crucial to adopting something.

We hear the words purpose and goals used frequently in business, but do we really know what they mean and how they are the same or different? A goal is the point one wishes to achieve. A purpose is the reason one aims at to achieve a goal.

Knowing your purpose in life helps you live with integrity. People who know their purpose in life know who they are, what they are, and why they are. And when you know yourself, it becomes easier to live a life that’s true to your core values.

Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life—the reasons you get up in the morning. Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For me, my life purpose is to create a world of better, brighter brains.

Finding your passion is not about choosing the right path or finding the perfect professional destiny. It’s about experimenting to see what ignites your joy. Passion comes when we rediscover our authentic, alive self, the one who has been muted and buried beneath a pile of other people’s expectations. There is not a single right path to be discovered or revealed.

Finding your passion is no different—it takes experimentation to see what clicks for you, and it takes effort.

Purpose, however, is about how you relate to other people. Purpose is what you’re here to share with the world. It’s how you use your passion. When you get down to it, we all have the same purpose: to help other people through our passion. The greatest task we have in life is to share the knowledge and skills we accumulate. It doesn’t have to be more complex than that.

He believes that if you define yourself by one very specific passion and your life changes in a way that doesn’t allow you to pursue that passion any longer, you might feel lost. The key is finding the underlying meaning in your passions to find a new way of channeling your expression.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? What often isn’t discussed in the quest for motivation is identity —who you are . . . and who you think you are at your core. They say the two most powerful words in the English language are the shortest: “I am.” Whatever you put after those two words determines your destiny.

When you say you are defined by a particular action, you are essentially priming yourself to identify with and justify a certain behavior.

When you consciously decide to identify with the habit or goal you want to create or achieve, or consciously un-identify with a habit you no longer want, you will experience enormous power.

The highest drive we have is to act consistently with how we perceive ourselves—it is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Use it to your benefit.

You can set up the most well-thought-out habits, but if your values are not in alignment with the ultimate goal, you’re not going to do it.

Your behavior has to support your values in some way, or there is no drive for it.

When we look at our values, we can determine whether the value we’ve stated is an end or whether it evokes something else.

5 Why’s and the deeper layers of meaning to something

Values need to be prioritized. My values are love, growth, contribution, and adventure, in that order. Each value builds on and contributes to the next. One’s values tend to not change from year to year unless you experience life conditions that change them—

When we’re unaware of our values and the values of the people closest to us, it creates a space for conflict to arise; discord usually results from values conflicting.

When it comes to doing anything in life, reasons reap rewards.

My story is evidence that feeling good is not required to feel motivated. If I waited until that day, I would have stopped teaching others to learn better when my sleeping problems escalated. And besides, how many times have we felt good on a given day and still not done what we said we would do? You could feel amazing and still get nothing done if your reasons for doing so are not strong enough.

Reasons that are tied to your purpose, identity, and values will sufficiently motivate you to act, even in the face of all of the daily...

It’s likely that there’s a good reason behind every task you need to accomplish, even the unpleasant ones.

If you’re struggling to find motivation to learn, or to accomplish anything else in your life, there is a good chance you haven’t uncovered the why of the task.