فصل 1

PART I

FREE YOUR MIND

Chapter 1

BECOMING LIMITLESS

“I’m so stupid.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m too dumb to learn.”

These were my mantras growing up. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t tell myself that I was slow, dumb, and that I would never learn to read, much less amount to anything later in life. If a pill existed that could supercharge my brain and make me smarter in one swallow (as there was in the 2011 movie Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper), I would have given anything to take it.

I wasn’t the only one who felt the way I did about myself. If you’d asked my teachers when I was a kid, many would have said that I was the last person they’d expect to be writing this book for you. Back then, they would have been surprised to know that I was reading a book, let alone writing one.

This all stems from an incident in kindergarten that completely altered the course of my life. I was in class one day, and there were sirens outside the window. Everyone in the classroom took notice, and the teacher looked out and said she saw fire trucks. The entire class responded to this information the way kindergarteners do: We immediately rushed to the windows. I was particularly excited because, by that point, I was already obsessed with superheroes (I still am). To me, firefighters were the closest thing to real-life superheroes I knew. I bolted to the window with everyone else.

The only problem was that I wasn’t tall enough to be able to look down at the fire trucks. One kid went to grab his chair to stand on, and that inspired the rest of us to do the same. I ran back to my desk to get mine, pushing it right up against the huge iron radiator that ran along the bottom of the windows. I got up on my chair, saw the firefighters, and completely lit up. This was so exciting! My eyes stared and mouth gasped as I watched these courageous heroes in action with their seemingly impenetrable uniforms and their bright red vehicle.

But then one of the other kids grabbed my chair from beneath me, which caused me to lose balance and go flying head-first into the radiator. I hit the metal heater extremely hard and I started losing blood. The school rushed me to the hospital, where doctors tended to my wounds. But they were candid with my mother afterward; the injury to my brain was not mild.

My mother said I was never quite the same after that. Where I had been an energized, confident, and curious child before, now I was noticeably shut down and had a new difficulty learning; I found it extremely hard to focus, I couldn’t concentrate, and my memory was awful. As you can imagine, school became an ordeal for me. Teachers would repeat themselves until I learned to pretend to understand. And while all the other kids were learning to read, I couldn’t make any sense out of the letters. Do you remember getting in those reading circles, passing around the book, and having to read out loud? For me, that was the worst—nervously waiting as the book crept closer and closer, only to look at the page and not understand one word (I think that’s where my crippling fear of public speaking initially came from).

It would take me another three years to be able to read, and it continued to be a struggle and an uphill battle for a long time after that.

I’m not sure I ever would have learned to read if it weren’t for the heroes I met and saw in comic books. Regular books couldn’t hold my attention at all, but my fascination with comics drove me to keep pushing myself until I could read their stories without waiting for someone else to read them to me. I would read them by flashlight under my covers late at night. Those stories gave me hope that one person could overcome impossible odds.

My favorite superheroes growing up were the X-Men, not because they were the strongest, but because they were misunderstood and weirdly different. I felt I could relate to them. They were mutants, they didn’t fit into society, and people who didn’t understand them shunned them. That was me, minus the superpowers. The X-Men were outcasts, and so was I. I belonged in their world.

I grew up in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City, and I was super-excited one night to discover that, according to the comic books, Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters was located near me.

When I was nine years old, I would get on my bike nearly every weekend to ride around my neighborhood looking for the school. I was obsessed. I thought, if only I could locate it, I would find in that school a place where I finally fit in, a place where it was safe to be different, a place where I could discover and develop my own superpowers.

THE BOY WITH THE BROKEN BRAIN

In the real world, life was not very kind. It was around this time that my grandmother, who lived with us and helped raise me, started showing advanced signs of dementia. Watching someone you love lose their mind and memory is hard to describe. It was like losing her over and over until she passed. She was my world and, combined with my learning challenges, she is why I am so passionate about brain health and fitness.

Back in school, I was bullied and made fun of, and not just on the playground but in the classroom, too. I remember one day in elementary school a teacher, frustrated because I wasn’t getting the lesson, pointed at me and said, “That’s the boy with the broken brain.” I was just crushed to realize that this was how she saw me—and that others probably saw me the same way.

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.

That’s what happened with me in that moment. Whenever I struggled to learn, did badly on a quiz, wasn’t picked for a team in gym class, or fell behind my other classmates, I would tell myself it was because my brain was broken. How could I possibly expect to do as well as others did? I was damaged. My mind didn’t work like everyone else’s. Even when I studied much harder than my schoolmates, my grades never reflected the effort I was putting in.

I was too stubborn to give up and managed to move on from grade to grade, but I was hardly thriving. While I was advanced in math because of the help of a few of my academically talented friends, I was horrible at most of the other subjects, especially classes such as English, reading, foreign languages, and music. Then, in my freshman year of high school, things got to the point where I was at risk of failing English. My parents were called in by my teacher to discuss what I could do to muster a passing grade.

She offered an extra-credit project for me. I was to write a report comparing the lives and accomplishments of two geniuses: Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein. She told me that if I did a good job on this report, she would be able to give me enough points to make sure I passed the class.

I considered this to be a huge opportunity, a chance to hit the reset button on what had been a difficult start to my high school career. I committed everything I had to writing the best report I possibly could. I spent hours and hours and hours at the library after school, trying to learn everything I could learn about these two brilliant minds while working on this paper.

Interestingly, during that research I came across multiple mentions that Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci each struggled with alleged learning difficulties.

After weeks of effort, I typed up the final report. I was so proud of what I’d done that I had the pages professionally bound. This report was a statement for me; it was the way I was going to announce to the world what I was capable of doing.

The day the report was due, I put it in my backpack, excited about handing it to my teacher and even more excited about the response I anticipated she would have to what I’d done. I planned to give it to her at the end of class, so I sat through whatever we were doing that day, trying to concentrate but constantly finding my thoughts flitting back to the look I expected to see on my teacher’s face when I presented her with the report.

But then she threw me a curveball I was not prepared to hit. About halfway through the class period, the teacher ended her lesson and told the students that she had a surprise for them. She said that I had been working on an extra-credit report and that she would like me to present it to the class —now.

I had spent most of my school life trying to shrink so small that I wouldn’t be called on in class; when you are the broken one, you don’t feel like you have much to offer. I was beyond shy, and I didn’t like to draw attention to myself. My superpower back then was being invisible. I was also deathly afraid of speaking in public. I’m not exaggerating here. If you hooked me up to a heart monitor at that moment, I might have broken the machine. On top of this, I could barely breathe. There was simply no way I was going to be able to stand in front of everyone and talk to them about the work I’d done. So, I took the only option I saw available to me.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t do it,” I stuttered, just barely getting the words out of my mouth.

The expression of disappointment on my teacher’s face—so different from the expression I’d fantasized earlier—was so profound that my heart nearly broke. But I just couldn’t do what she wanted me to do. When class was over, after everyone had left, I threw my report in the garbage, and along with it a big part of my self-respect and worth.

YOU ARE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

Somehow, in spite of all the troubles I had in school, I managed to get into a local university. I thought being a freshman in college meant a last opportunity to make a fresh start. I dreamt about making my family proud, and to showing the world (and, more importantly, myself) that I did have the potential to succeed. I was in a new environment. College professors taught differently than high school teachers did, and no one at this college had any preconceived notions about me. I worked my butt off, but I actually wound up doing even worse in my college classes than high school.

A few months into this, I started to face my reality. I couldn’t see the point of wasting time and money that I did not have. I was ready to quit school altogether. I told a friend about my plans and he suggested that, before I made a decision, I go with him to visit his family for the weekend.

He thought that getting me away from the campus might give me some perspective. When we arrived, his father showed me around their property before dinner. Along the way, he asked how school was going for me. It was the worst question anyone could ask me at the time, and I’m sure my response stunned him. I erupted into tears. Not holding-back-the-tears crying, but straight up bawling. I could see he was taken aback by this, but his innocent question had broken the dam holding back so many pent-up emotions.

I told him the whole “boy with the broken brain” story while he listened patiently. When I was finished, he looked me directly in the eyes.

“Jim, why are you in school?” he said. “What do you want to be? What

do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you want to share?”

I didn’t have immediate answers to any of these questions because no one had ever asked me them before, but I felt as though I needed to answer them now. I started to speak, and he stopped me. He tore a couple of pieces of paper from his pocket diary and told me to write down my answers. (In this book, I’ll show you how to ask questions to learn and achieve anything faster.)

I spent the next several minutes writing a bucket list. When I was finished, I began folding up the papers and preparing to put them in my pocket. But as I was doing so, my friend’s father grabbed the pages out of my hand. I freaked out, because I didn’t think what I’d written was going to be read by anyone else, especially this complete stranger. But he opened the pages and read while I stewed in my discomfort.

It seemed as though he took hours to read what I’d written, though I’m sure it was only a minute or two. When he finished, he said, “You’re this close,” holding the index fingers on his right and left hands about a foot apart, “to getting every single thing on that list.”

That statement seemed absurd to me. I told him I couldn’t crack this list if I had 10 lifetimes. But then he took his fingers and, without expanding the distance between them, placed one on each side of my head. The space he was describing was my brain.

“That’s the key,” he said. “Come with me; I have something to show you.”

We walked back to the house where he took me to a room that I’d never seen before. It was filled wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with books. Now remember, at that point in my life, I was not a fan of books; it was like being in a room full of snakes. But what made it even worse was that he started grabbing snakes from his shelves and handing them to me. I looked at the titles and realized these were biographies of incredible men and women throughout history, as well as some early personal-growth books such as The Magic of Thinking Big, The Power of Positive Thinking, and Think and Grow Rich.

“Jim, I want you to read one of these books a week.”

My first thought was, Have you not been listening to anything I’ve been saying? I didn’t ask this out loud, but I did respond: “I don’t know how I could do that. You know, reading doesn’t come easily to me, and I have so much schoolwork to do.”

He held up a finger, saying, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” I later learned he was paraphrasing a quote often attributed to Mark Twain.

“Look,” I said. “I understand how reading these books would be really helpful, but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.”

He paused and then reached into his pocket, pulled out my bucket list, and started reading each one out loud.

There was something about hearing my dreams in another person’s voice that messed with my mind and my soul something fierce. Truth be told, many of the things on the list were things I wanted to do for my family— things my parents could never afford or would never have done for themselves even if they could afford them. Hearing this read out loud moved me in ways I didn’t think possible. It deeply tapped me into my drive and purpose. (We will unleash your motivation together in Part 3.) When he was finished, I told him I would do exactly what he suggested, though secretly I had no idea how I was going to accomplish that feat.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION

I went back to school after the weekend, armed with the books he’d given me. On my desk were now two piles: one that I had to read for school, and one that I promised to read. The scale of what I’d agreed to registered with me. How was I going to make a dent in these piles when reading was such a labor for me? I was already struggling to get through the first pile—what was I going to do? Where would I get the time? So I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t exercise, I didn’t watch television or spend time with friends.

Instead, I practically lived at the library, until one night when I passed out from sheer exhaustion and fell down a flight of stairs, sustaining yet another head injury.

It wasn’t until two days later that I woke up in the hospital. I thought I had died, and maybe a part of me wished that I had. It was truly a dark and low point in life. I was wasting away, my weight was down to 117 pounds, and I was so dehydrated that I was hooked up to IV bags.

As miserable as I was, I said to myself, “There has to be a better way.” At that moment, a nurse came into my room, carrying a mug of tea with a picture of Einstein on it, the very same subject of the book report that inspired me to dig deep and study back in grade school. The quote next to his image said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

That’s when it dawned on me: Maybe I was asking the wrong question. I started to wonder, what was my real problem? I knew I was a slow learner, but I had been thinking the same way about it for years. I realized that I was trying to solve my learning problems by thinking the way I’d been taught to think—to just work harder. But what if I could teach myself a better method to learn? What if I could learn in a way that was more efficient, effective, and even enjoyable? What if I could learn how to learn faster?

I committed in that very moment to finding that way, and with that commitment, my mindset began to shift.

I asked the nurse for a course bulletin and flipped through it, page by page. After a couple hundred pages, I could find nothing but classes on what to learn—Spanish, history, math, science—but there were no classes teaching students how to learn.

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

When I got out of the hospital, I was so intrigued by the idea of learning how to learn that I set my studies aside and focused only on the books that my mentor gave me, as well as books I found on adult learning theory, multiple intelligence theory, neuroscience, personal growth, educational psychology, speed reading, and even ancient mnemonics (I wanted to know what older cultures did to pass on knowledge before they had external storage devices like the printing press and computers). I was obsessed to solve this riddle: How does my brain work, so I can work my brain?

About a couple months of deep immersion into my new self-directed studies, a light switch flipped on. My ability to focus was stronger. I started to understand new concepts because I was able to concentrate—I was no longer easily distracted. I could better recall information that I had studied weeks before with little difficulty. I had a new level of energy and curiosity.

For the first time in my life, I could read and comprehend information in a fraction of the time that it used to take. My newfound competence gave me a sense of confidence that I’d never felt before. My daily life changed too— I was clear, I knew what to do to move myself forward, and I unlocked an empowering and sustainable sense of motivation. With these results, my mindset changed and I started to believe that anything was possible.

But I was also upset. It seemed to me all of my years of self-doubt and suffering could have been avoided if this critical method of meta learning (learning how to learn) had been taught in school. I remember teachers telling me constantly to study and concentrate harder. Telling a child to do things like “concentrate” is like telling them to play the ukulele; it’s very difficult to do without ever being taught how.

And, following the hero’s journey, I couldn’t help but share the treasure and lessons I learned. I started tutoring these methods to other students. The turning point came when I worked with a freshman who wanted to learn how to read faster, boost comprehension, and retain the information she was studying. She worked diligently and achieved her goal of reading 30 books in 30 days. I knew how she did it—I taught her the method you’ll learn in Chapter 14—but I wanted to know why. I discovered that her motivation was that her mother had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer, and she was determined to save her by studying books on health, wellness, and medicine. Months later, she called me, crying tears of joy, to tell me that her mother’s cancer was in remission.

It was in that moment that I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. And our capacity to learn is limitless; we simply need to be shown how to access it. Seeing the way this woman’s life was changed ignited in me a purpose, allowing me to recognize what became my life’s mission: to teach the mindset, motivation, and methods to upgrade your brain and learn anything faster so you can unlock your exceptional life.

Over the course of more than two decades, I’ve developed a reliable and proven set of practical methods to enhance learning, many of which appear in this book. I have not only kept my promise to read a book a week, but continue to serve and support everyone from children labeled “learning disabled,” to seniors with brain-aging challenges. Our team, dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, passionately supports Alzheimer’s research. And we believe education is every child’s birthright, funding the creation of schools around the world from Guatemala to Kenya, providing health care, clean water, and learning for children in need via amazing organizations such as WE Charity and Pencils of Promise. That’s our mission—to build better brighter brains. We’re leaving no brain behind.

I’ve taught these techniques to others with astonishing results, leading me to address more than 150,000 people in live audiences each year in every field imaginable, to serve as the brain coach to top personalities in sports and entertainment, to train at many of the world’s leading companies and universities, to head a large accelerated learning online platform with students from 195 countries, and to host a top educational podcast called Kwik Brain, with tens of millions of downloads and to have my teachings receive hundreds of millions of video views. This book is filled with lessons and practical advice I’ve learned over the years, along with wisdom and resources from many of the guest experts who have been featured on our show.

I say all of this because, having dedicated my life to researching and teaching this subject, I know what’s inside this book and, more importantly, I know what’s inside you.

FINDING PROFESSOR X’S SCHOOL

There’s a serendipitous coda to this story. As I mentioned, I regularly offer brain coaching to CEOs and their teams. A few years ago, Jim Gianopulos, then CEO and Chairman of 20th Century Fox, invited me to do a coaching session with his executive team. I went onto the film lot on a Friday morning and spent several hours with top staff members. They were particularly open to my message, and they instantly connected with the techniques.

When the session was over, Jim came up to me and said, “That was incredible. It was one of the very best training sessions we’ve ever held.” I was delighted to hear this, of course. Who doesn’t love positive feedback?

Later, during a tour of the lot, my eye landed on a poster for the Wolverine movie, which was scheduled to come out later that year. I pointed to the poster and said, “I can’t wait to see that film. I’m a huge fan.”

“Oh, you like superheroes?” Jim said.

“Love ‘em. The X-Men have played a major role in my life.” I went on to tell him about my childhood brain injury, how comic books helped me learn to read, and my search for Professor X’s school.

He smiled at me. “You know, we have another 30 days of shooting on the next X-Men movie in Montreal. Why don’t you come along and spend a week on the set? The actors would love to work with you.”

There was no way I was going to turn this down. I’d never been on a movie set before, and this wasn’t just any movie set—it was an X-Men movie set.

The next morning, we got on the plane they called the X-Jet. The other passengers included most of the mutant cast, and I found myself sitting between Jennifer Lawrence and Halle Berry. This was turning out to be the best day ever.

On the plane and the next week on set, I got to share some of my brain tips for speed-reading scripts and for remembering lines with some of the extraordinary cast and crew. And guess what? The very first scene I got to see them shoot took place in Professor X’s school—the very place I’d spent endless days imagining and searching for when I was a kid. It was such a surreal moment for me. What’s one of your dreams? One that is ever present, like a splinter in your brain? Imagine it in vivid detail. Visualize it.

Feel it. Believe it. And work daily for it.

Amazingly, that’s not the best part of this story. When I got back from the trip, I came home to find a package waiting for me. It was huge, about the size of a large flat-screen TV. I opened the package and pulled out an enormous framed photograph of me with the entire X-Men cast. The photo had a note from the chairman, which read:

Jim, thank you so much for sharing your superpowers with all of us. I know you’ve been looking for your superhero school ever since you were a child. Here’s your class photo.

See the actual full-color superhero photo at LimitlessBook.com/classphoto.

UNLIMITING TOGETHER

unlimiting (noun)

The act or process of casting aside inaccurate and restrictive perceptions of one’s potential and embracing the reality that, with the right mindset, motivation, and methods, there are no limitations.

For so much of my life, I allowed myself to be defined by my perceived restrictions. I’d gotten what I thought was a terrible break when I was a kid, and I was convinced that this had set the course for a compromised future.

But, with the help of some key people, I came to discover that my perceived restrictions were not really restrictions at all. They were merely obstacles I needed to overcome or limitations I needed to unlearn. And when I did, what I could learn to be or do each day became limitless.

Becoming limitless is not just about accelerated learning, speed-reading, and having an incredible memory. Yes, you will learn how to do all of that and more. But being limitless is not about being perfect. It’s about progressing beyond what you currently believe is possible. Just as you’ve learned limits from your family, culture, and life experiences, you can unlearn them. These constraints are only temporary obstacles that you can learn to overcome. What I have come to find over my years of working with people is that most everyone limits and shrinks their dreams to fit their current reality. We convince ourselves that the circumstances we are in, the beliefs we’ve accepted, and the path we are on is who we are and who we will always be. But there is another choice. You can learn to unlimit and expand your mindset, your motivation, and your methods to create a limitless life. When you do what others won’t, you can live how others can’t. By reading this book, you have taken an important step. Remember, one step in a better direction can completely change your destination.

The key when you are taking your steps is to have a map, a model of success. Armed with this there, is no trial or dragon you can’t overcome. So here it is:

THE LIMITLESS MODEL

You can learn to be, do, have, and share with no constraints. I wrote this book to prove this to you. If you are not learning or living at your full potential, if there is a gap between your current reality and your desired reality, here’s the reason: There is a limit that must be released and replaced in one of three areas:

A limit in your Mindset—you entertain a low belief in yourself, your capabilities, what you deserve, or what is possible.

A limit in your Motivation—you lack the drive, purpose, or energy to take action.

A limit in your Methods—you were taught and are acting on a process that is not effective to create the results you desire.

This applies to an individual, a family, an organization. We all have our own unique story of struggles and strengths. Whatever your situation happens to be, here’s the best part: You’re not alone. I’m going to help you become limitless in your own way, within the three-part framework you’re about to learn: Limitless Mindset, Limitless Motivation, and Limitless Methods. Let me break it down:

Mindset (the WHAT): deeply held beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions we create about who we are, how the world works, what we are capable of and deserve, and what is possible.

Motivation (the WHY): the purpose one has for taking action. The energy required for someone to behave in a particular way.

Method (the HOW): a specific process for accomplishing something, especially an orderly, logical, or systematic way of instruction.

One other note about the diagram on the previous page. You’ll see that where mindset crosses over with motivation, I have the word inspiration.

You’re inspired, but you don’t know which methods to employ or where to channel your energy. Where motivation and method intersect, you have implementation. In this case, your results are going to be limited to what you feel you deserve, what you feel you are capable of, and what you believe is possible because you lack the proper mindset. Where mindset and method intersect, you have ideation. Your ambitions stay in your mind, because you lack the energy to do anything about them. Where all three intersect, you have the limitless state. You then have the fourth I, which is integration.

Throughout this book, you’ll find exercises, studies, mental tools, and the results of exciting work being done both on the frontier of cognitive science and performance as well as ancient wisdom (for example, how ancient civilizations remembered generations of knowledge before external storage devices like the printing press). We’ll approach the 3 M’s in turn:

In Part II, Limitless Mindset, you’ll learn what is possible when you eradicate limiting beliefs.

In Part III, Limitless Motivation, you’ll discover why your purpose is your power and keys to unleash your drive and energy.

In Part IV, Limitless Methods, you’ll discover how to learn at your best with proven processes—the tools and techniques that will propel you forward toward the life you desire and deserve.

And, at the end of the book, I give you a 10-day plan to jump-start your progress toward a limitless week and a limitless life.

When you finish this book, you’ll have the ability to be limitless in any area important to you, whether it’s academic, health, career, relationships, or personal growth. Since I never truly got to study at the X-Men school, I created it for you in our online Kwik Learning Academy, where people of all ages from 195 nations train with us daily to unleash their mental superpowers. Consider Limitless your textbook. It would be an honor to be your Professor X, and I’m so excited that you’ve decided to take this journey with me. Class is now in session. And here’s the best part; your timing could not be any better.