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Welcome to Feel Better, Live More Bitesize, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend.
Today's clip is from episode 469 of the podcast with globally renowned brain coach Jim Kwik.
Jim believes that small lifestyle changes can lead to big improvements in brain function.
In this clip, he explains a simple framework for making change in our lives and shares his top habits to optimise brain health, and get the best out of our minds.
If you wanted to create a new result in your life, which most of us do, you have to make a new choice, right?
There are only four fundamental choices to make a change.
You either could stop something, you could start something, you could do less of something, or you can do more of something.
That's literally the only things you could do, because if you did the fifth thing is not do anything.
That's insanity, right?
Doing the same thing, expecting a different result.
So you want to create a new result, let's say it's wellness.
You gotta stop something, start something, do less of something, do more something.
You could stop smoking, right?
You could start meditating.
You could do less binge -watching television sitcoms. Or you could do more movement throughout the day, right?
And so, I'm not saying this is easy, but I'm saying it is pretty straightforward and simple.
And so, when I'm looking at how to make my life better, I could ask myself these kind of questions like, is this good for my brain, or is this bad for my brain?
Something simple. And then I can ask, what can I stop, what can I start, what can I do less of, what can I do more of?
And those little things add up to big things over time, cause that consistency compounds.
And so I think that's the importance of mastering your mind because it gives you awareness and it reminds you of you have agency.
At the start of this conversation we both were sharing how life is short, time is limited, let's not waste our days away, let's look after our brains, let's be intentional and live lives to our fullest potential, as much as we can, right.
You mentioned some sort of habits there, which is really interesting to me.
I wanted to know, what do you think of some of the common habits that people all over the world now are engaging in each day that have been detrimental to their brain health?
University studies suggest about 40 % of our day is spent habitual.
Like mindless. We're just going through a routine, but we're not thoughtful about it, because we're autopilot, right?
And so the idea is you create your habits and your habits create you.
And also habits could also be giving you a negative result.
There are certain things that we're doing that we could stop or do less of, right?
The choices. And then you could always do the opposite, start something new or do more of something that's positive.
What you eat matters especially if you're gray matter.
So, I would say, on the opposite side of all the brain foods that we talk about, like avocados and blueberries and so on, I would say, you know, the processed food, refined foods, you know, a lot of chemicals in foods, the high sugar, you know, the glucose spikes, that's something that can be detrimental to our brain, right?
Second thing, negative self -talk.
When we say, why me?
Why does this always happen to me?
Why am I not enough?
I'm not that smart.
whatever it happens to be.
And I always say, stop, if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them, right?
And so the idea here is negative self -talk could be detrimental.
Third thing, being sedentary, right?
We live behind screens.
I don't know about most people, but I do.
And we're not moving and the number one reason, I want to remind everyone, the number one reason we have a brain, it's number one function is to control our movement, and as your body moves, your brain grooves.
And so I would say something that's negative, a negative habit is not moving.
You know they say sitting is the new smoking, but when we exercise we create you know BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factors, which is like fertilizer for your brain for neuroplasticity.
When we exercise we create dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, you know these important neurotransmitters and substances that are really good for cognitive health and cognitive performance.
When we move we create blood flow.
It's more oxygen to your brain.
I mean there's so many benefits.
It reduces stress, and so on.
I would also say being around negative people is not so much good for your brain.
I don't know if you ever notice, like some people it seems like batteries are included, but there are few people batteries just were not included.
And they like take all your energy and your drive and your your motivation and your creativity.
So I would say who we spend time with is who we become.
Yeah. And being around people that that are not who you want to be like or aspects of them, that they don't inspire you.
I mean, we only people to cheer lead for us to be kind to us to encourage us.
And if you haven't found that person, be that person, be that person for somebody else.
be that person, especially for yourself.
So a negative peer group.
And again, those people could be your family.
It could be your friends, people closest to you.
And they could be sincere but they could be sincerely wrong too, you know.
They could have good intentions, maybe they they're like, oh, I always listen to those podcasts and reading all those books or whatever.
And maybe they don't want, deep down there's a secondary gain.
They don't want you to outgrow them because they don't wanna be separate from you.
So it can be good intentions or maybe they don't want you to get your hopes up, and they're trying to protect you.
With our friends and family, sometimes the people that we care about most are the ones that hold us back because we give them permission, and we give up our sovereignty to their expectations and opinions.
And I want us to remind everyone, you could love your family, but they don't have to be your peers.
Like when I say I have a positive peer group, I'm saying self -selecting individuals that their opinion affects how you feel, you know, and affect your standards, right?
Meaning, I have this rule that just don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.
Don't take criticism, because like a lot of us are fearful of other people's opinions and expectations.
But if you want to do anything in your life, you know, there's this judgment that comes around it and then people have their opinions, especially on social media.
um and we could decide and hold that internal reality that you know we will work on having the people around us that we can identify with that you know i can that they relate to that inspire them and i certainly have you know people like that also as well.
You mentioned some of the habits that people are engaging with that are maybe sabotaging their day -to -day lives in ways that are stealing their life away without them realizing if we flip that, what are three of your favorite pro -brain habits that people could do?
How would you answer that?
Let me give you a few more of the negative habits and then cause that'll inform the positive ones.
So, we talked about a bad brain diet, you know, is probably not good for your brain definitely Negative thinking is a habit, habits of thought.
Not moving is a habit, being sedentary.
So obviously the opposite of all these make a difference.
A positive peer group is good, but a negative peer group could affect your words, your actions, your thoughts, your character, your habits.
A dirty environment.
I mean, we don't think about our environment as much, but our external reality affects our internal reality.
So you notice, like, you clean your desk or you put everything in the right folder on your computer, you have clarity of thought.
Um, but a messy environment reflects.
You have to use so much energy to hold like where everything is.
And I feel like that wouldn't be a good use of our brain.
So a negative habit would be, you know, sustaining a dirty environment.
Um, not learning something is not good for your brain.
You know, if you're not learning, you're not growing, you're not challenging.
And so like our brains are like, it's an organ, but and it acts like a muscle, it's use it or lose it.
And so I would say not learning every day could affect your brain, and that's a habit, and then being stressed all the time could affect our brain.
Emotional stress, financial stress, whatever the stressors are.
Chronic stress has been shown to shrink the human brain, and so not having coping mechanisms, for me habits that have really helped me of late, I would say, spending more time in nature because I'm not on my screen.
Nature is very healing, clean air, better lighting.
I feel grounded, reduces my stress.
I also could do that with my family.
I would put one more negative habit on there besides the things we've talked about in last episode like touching your phone at night or the first thing in the morning, all those things.
Anything that would affect your sleep And that could be a habit of drinking caffeine later in the afternoon.
It could be being on screens.
It could be ruminating, which is a habit of all the things you need to do or all the things that worry you.
And I'm not saying, again, it's easy to mitigate these things, but the self -awareness is a starting point for all change again.
So good habits for me, being out in nature, going to bed at this at the same time is so very important to me.
I mean it took me a long time to get to the point where I'm just okay with going to bed at like 9, 930.
Welcome to my world man, yes, I love it.
So going to bed at the same time each night even on weekends and no one's perfect about it but it's made a big difference in my and then the last thing I would say the habit of looking for joy.
I mean, this thing I talk about called The Dominant Question and we mentioned it very very briefly in our first conversation.
But when I was with Will Smith, I trained a lot of actors how to speed read scripts, memorize their lines, be focused on set.
And this Dominant Question idea is like we have 60 ,000 thoughts on average a day.
a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions, and there's certain questions we ask all the time that we don't consciously and unconsciously.
And those questions determine our reality.
And his dominant question we found out is, how do I make this moment magical?
And he gets answers, right?
And then I was like, OK, my dominant question is, how do we make it better?
So how do we make this question better?
And he was like, OK, instead of, how do I make this moment magical, How about, how do I make this moment even more magical?
With the presupposition being this moment is already magical.
We were shooting in Toronto, a superhero film.
And it was like two o 'clock at night.
It was a night shoot.
And it's not very glamorous.
It's cold. It's in February in Canada.
But his family and I are in a tent, shivering a little bit, watching the screens.
And during the break, he's making us hot chocolate, even though there's a crew that would do that, and he starts telling us stories and cracking jokes.
That's a result of that dominant question.
How do I make this moment even more magical?
The idea here is that one of my habits is just trying to find more joy, more magic.
And I think what we look for, we're more likely to find.
It's like that, what's that, that red car experiment.
It's like, you know, you see, if I asked everybody like in the past 24 hours how many red cars they saw on the way to home or work.
They're like, I don't know how many, but I, you probably saw them.
Yes. But if you were offered somebody, you know, a hundred dollars for every single red car they saw, they'd be very clear in seeing the red cars.
And I feel like there's a lot of things we could be grateful for at any given time, but we're not asking those questions.
I think that's such a key point.
when we think about joy or gratitude or how do you make this moment magical?
Yeah, even asking that question is what can I be grateful for, you know in this moment, it just sensitized you to see more at cars that's always there but we're not paying attention.
Your brain primarily is a deletion device, it's trying to keep information out.
If we let everything in, there's a billion stimuli that would overload us right?
But when you ask questions, as we activate that reticular activating system, which is like a spotlight, you know, and so you start seeing what you're asking for.
And you know, I think that's a great habit to be in.
You know, gratitude habit is so good for your brain because it gets you out of fear and gets you out of stress because again, chronic stress shrinks your brain.
Chronic fear, you know, will make you more susceptible.
The colds, the flus, the virus will compromise your immune system.
But I think gratitude is an incredible antidote.
Yeah, I think a lot of people listen to this show because they want to live a healthier and happier life, and often they're thinking about habits that they can implement into their life.
I think you have something where you say for any habit you want to bring into your life, you've got to ask yourself three questions.
Yeah. I think knowledge is not power.
It's the potential of power.
It becomes power when we apply it.
I think how we take knowledge and turn it into action.
the three questions I ask, I'm asking how can I use this?
Then I ask myself why must I use this?
So it goes from my head to my heart.
Then the third question is when?
When will I use it?
Again, one of the most important productivity performance tools you have is your calendar.
I think for every hour people spend listening to this conversation or reading a book or whatever, a general rule is to spend an hour, an equal hour putting it into action, right, you spend an hour listening to a podcast, at least spend that another hour or some time putting it into play.
Yeah I think those questions are brilliant because yes it applies to learning, it applies to a habit that they hear, right, they think oh that sounds interesting, okay how can I use this habit, okay, that's getting them to think a little bit.
Why must I use it? Because without that why, without reasons you won't get the results.
And then it's when will.
When will I? Yeah. Okay so then it goes from your head, to your heart, to your hands.
Meaning, how can I use this?
You're coming up with all ideas in your head.
Why must I use this, right?
The heart. And then the hands, when?
You know, when am I going to act on this?
And so I feel like when you have those three things in play, there's less friction.
Yeah, that's brilliant.
To learn something, to do anything, at all.
you're going to take some kind of action that you need to take that might be even uncomfortable.
There's that mental exercise, this thought experiment and I would challenge everyone to do this with us.
If you woke up and there was $86 ,000 in your account but you knew at midnight it was going to disappear and then it replenishes the next day, how would you invest that money?
and you would invest in things that really mattered, right, that could be there for you.
That's our time because there are 86 ,400 seconds in a day, and it's the same thing.
Whatever we don't invest into the future, we just lose.
And regardless as you're listening to this of your age or stage in life, simple things make a big difference.
Hope you enjoyed that bite -size clip, do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family.
And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite -sized Friday email.
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Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Make sure you press subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.
