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

by Jim Kwik

If our mindset is not aligned with our desires or goals, we will never achieve them. It’s critical to identify your limiting beliefs, stories, and deeply held beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions about yourself and what’s possible.

To achieve your goals and habits you have to believe you are worthy of and capable of actually achieving them

Often when you put a label on someone or something, you create a limit—the label becomes the limitation. Adults have to be very careful with their external words because these quickly become a child’s internal words.

In this age of connectivity, ignorance is a choice.

There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that if we never let our mind wander or be bored for a moment, we pay a price—poor memory, mental fog, and fatigue.

“Our brain appears to strengthen a memory each time we recall it, and at the same time forget irrelevant memories that are distracting us,” said Dr. Wimber. Forcing yourself to recall information instead of relying on an outside source to supply it for you is a way of creating and strengthening a permanent memory. When you contrast that with the reality that most of us have a habit of constantly looking up information—maybe even the same information—without bothering to try to remember it, it seems we’re doing ourselves harm.

“In a digital-first world, where millennials obtain all their answers to problems at the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, the reliance on technology to solve every question confuses people’s perception of their own knowledge and intelligence. And that reliance may well lead to overconfidence and poor decision-making,”

the belief we might develop in response to forgetting does far more damage than the lapse in memory. That kind of self-talk reinforces a limiting belief, rather than acknowledging the mistake and reacquiring the information.

very few schools anywhere in the world have incorporated learning how to learn into their curriculums. They’ll fill us with information. They’ll expose us to great works of literature and to figures who changed the course of civilization. They will test us—sometimes endlessly—to determine whether we can repeat back what they’ve taught us. But they won’t get underneath all of this to teach us how to teach ourselves, to make enriching our minds, discovering new concepts, and truly absorbing what we learn fundamental to our everyday lives.

what you have between your ears is your greatest wealth-creating asset.

Your ability to think, solve problems, make the right decisions, create, innovate, and imagine is how we add value. The faster you can learn, the faster you can earn.

The acronym FASTER stands for: Forget, Act, State, Teach, Enter, Review.

your mind is like a parachute—it only works when it’s open.

If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. Your capabilities aren’t fixed, and it’s possible to learn anything.

Most people are sincerely interested in doing something that they know they should do. But they don’t do it, because they consider it a preference not a promise.

All behavior is driven by belief, so before we address how to learn, we must first address the underlying beliefs we hold about what is possible.

When we take responsibility for something, we are imbued with great power to make things better.

“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.”

“The positive thinking that usually comes with optimism is a key part of effective stress management. And effective stress management is associated with many health benefits.”