Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Jim Kwik, Brain Coach, on Mindfulness and Boosting Memory

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Can we ask you something? Have you ever paused, mid-shower, because you can’t remember if you actually shampooed your hair already? If you’re guilty of this, then you need Jim Kwik. From remembering your bosses’ birthday, to getting remembered by clients, Jim tells Nicole all his best tricks to make your mind work for you.

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ready for some money rehab? Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player, GameStop. And should I have a 401k? You don't do it? No, I never have. You think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg.

The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. The cold lapid. As you know by now, every Friday we talk to a public figure making change in every sense of the word and along the way has been in or might still be in money rehab. Today we're talking to Jim Quick, who is an expert on making your mind work for you. He coaches CEOs and celebrities on increasing their learning skills and memory. Today, we talk all about strategies to use your brainpower to level up at work. So before we dive in, we start with a quick round of money rehab, never have I ever. So have you played never have I ever? The drinking game? Yeah, not recently.

So basically, if you have done something, unfortunately, I don't have shots for us over Zoom, but just say I have. And if you haven't, just say I haven't. Ready? Okay, let's do this. Never have I ever taken out a student loan. I have not. Never have I ever lost my credit card. I have not. Never have I ever maxed out a credit card. I have not. Never have I ever lost my credit card. I have not. Never have I ever maxed out a credit card. I have. Never have I ever fundraised for a charity. I have. Many. Never have I ever negotiated a contract. I have done that many times. Never have I ever pitched an investor. I have not. We've never accepted investor capital.

Like a boss. Never have I ever argued with a family member over money. Yeah, maybe once or twice. Never have I ever started a business. Yeah, I have started a business. teach me how not to lose a credit card because i'm constantly leaving mine everywhere yeah i think if any of your listeners have ever felt absent-minded like senior moments are coming too early you read a page in a book forget what you just read you're in the shower you can't remember you shampooed your hair you misplaced things your wallet your purse your cell phone your car keys something larger like your car you see the people in the mall in the parking lot using their car alarm like gps trying to figure out where they parked their car and they realized they took lift earlier that day um you know a big part of misplacing things i think you know we waste a lot of time looking for things is um

the art of memory is the art of attention right and bringing mindfulness into the things that we do and we in limitless i talk about habits and designing habits and really it's all around emotion that uh you know if you reward the times when you do remember something like you celebrate you do your move or you say yes or victory the times you do remember things, you tend to reinforce those things. I mean, one of the best ways of doing things is always having a place. Everything has a place, right? Then you don't have to use up a lot of your mental energy to try to keep track of everything, where you put things, where you put your phone, your keys, and every time you use your credit card, always putting it back. So, I mean, memory is a muscle. There's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's a trained memory and untrained memory.

And a lot of us, you know, our memory muscles are a little flabby because we don't use it as much. That's not the only muscle of mine that is flabby post the COVID. So, can you teach me how to, because that seems less exhausting than cardio, but maybe not. Can you teach me how to, because that seems less exhausting than cardio, but maybe not. Can you teach me how to improve my muscle memory? Yeah, absolutely. So here's the thing. About one third of our memory is predetermined by genetics and biology, but two thirds is in our control.

So there's many things you can do to move the needle. And I believed in life and certainly in our careers, two of the most costly words in business are, I forgot. I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it. I forgot where I put it. I forgot that conversation. I forgot what I was going to say. I forgot that meaning. I forgot that person's name. Every single time we say these words, we lose trust. We could lose her relationship. We could lose time, credibility, a sale. I can't tell you how many people have lost sales by calling somebody by the wrong name or not be able to have product information or client information at their mental fingertips. So there are a lot of things we could do. I always tell people, remember MOM, first of all. It's like the mother of all memory skills.

Let's say you have trouble remembering someone's name, but let's say everybody who's listening, and I imagine people, it's a short-term issue. You meet somebody, you get their name, name just disappears out of your mind. And it's really hard. You know, I think it's the number one business etiquette networking skill there is.

How are you going to show somebody you're going to care for their finances, their future, their family, their health, wellness, whatever you have to offer them if you don't care enough just to remember them. You know, but let's say you have trouble remembering names, but Nicole has a suitcase of $10 million cash for you or your favorite charity. If you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet, who's going to remember that person's name?

All your listeners will. All of a sudden, everyone's a memory expert. And what technique did they use? They didn't use any technique. So it had nothing to do with their capabilities. It had everything to do with the M and the first M in mom, which stands for motivation, understanding our motives for taking action. You know, I believe that reasons reap results, just like in doing the things that you teach in your books, you know, and your courses that if people don't have a reason, they won't get the result because they won't follow through. They'll procrastinate. They'll put things off. So just a simple thing like asking yourself, why do I want to remember this? Let's say it's a name.

Why do I want to remember this person's name? Maybe it's to show personal respect. Maybe it's to do some networking. Maybe it's to get a referral. Maybe it's to make a sale. Maybe it's to practice these things. I listened and I heard on this podcast, if you can't come up with one reason, you won't get the result. The O in mom stands for observation. A lot of people, they already forgot what the first M was. I've kicked off my own podcast. So this is, this is, this is memory rehab here. So what we're going to do is we're going to, the M stands for motivation. What is your motivation? So all of learning, you know, comes down to our motivation. So we have control over that. But I would say the O in MOM stands for observation. A lot of times we're not forgetting

something. We're just not paying attention. The art of memory is the art of attention. So let's say, even if it's like, remember someone's name, a lot of people, they're not listening. They're thinking about how they're going to respond they're waiting for their turn to speak and they're talking to themselves and even if people just imagine the word listen in their mind or write down write down the word listen just as a brain exercise scramble the letters what word does it spell perfectly it's it spells the word silent, which is kind of interesting, like a little mnemonic device, but just being silent, we can remember things if we're not, if we're present with somebody, I think the people who we admire, who have a, you know, incredible memory, or even a

powerful presence with people, it comes from being powerfully present with people, but most people, they're just not there. And, and so I think it's so important. And the last M, motivation observation, are the methods. You know, the things that we have in our podcast that we write about in our books and courses and stuff like that. There are strategies that there's, you know, memory is not something you have. It's something that you do. And there's always a method behind what looks like magic. Just like with our personal finances.

If people are successful in certain areas, there's genius leaves clues. It's not my magic. There's no magic pill, but there's definitely a magic process. Okay. Motivation, observation, and methods. Mom! Well, the second one, the silence, I always thought, I learned this from my ex who told his daughter, you have two ears and one mouth, so listen more than you talk, which is essentially the same type of philosophy.

Yeah, I think it's important because sometimes we have that inner voice that's just kind of distracts us. You know, a big part of what we do in training is teaching people how to have focus and concentration in a world full of distractions and a world full of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts, you know, and it's, it's challenging. How do you maintain your focus and your flow when you're working remotely? How do you be able to support your, your family or children, you know, with, with their life and their learning? Um, if there's just always things going on and, uh, distraction is a muscle. So is focus and whatever we're doing repeatedly, we get better at. And so if we're always like distracting ourselves, we wonder later on why we can't focus when we're on a Zoom and we're suffering from, you know, the screen fatigue, you know, and we can't listen to a conversation,

our mind wanders. But if we do things to train our focus, little things, just bringing mindfulness to simple things like brushing our teeth or eating a meal, you know, and just are going for a walk and just being present that will show up in other areas because how we do anything is how we do everything. Yeah, I when I started looking into mindfulness, that's actually how I started with brushing my teeth and like, feeling the bristles and trying not to think of my to do list or what I was going to eat for dinner or all the things.

How do you wake up? What's your morning routine? What do you feed yourself and your brain? This is a very popular subject we talk about in the book where we, in our podcast, and if you want to win the day, you have to win that first hour of the day, you know? And so for me, this starts the night before,

getting good night's sleep. And it's, and we know that, but it's, you know, how many people are actually prioritizing their sleep, with everything that's going on you know but if you don't sleep how's your ability to do your job the next day you know to be able to make good decisions your focus um your ability to solve problems right and so we we talk a lot about tactics to be able to maximize your sleep but the first thing i do in the morning i remember my dreams i have a dream journal right by my bed. I just take 60 seconds.

I just write down some of the highlights because there's gold in there. I don't know about you, Nicole, but like, you know, our brains, they don't shut off at night. If anything, they're more active. And they're just, when you're working all day or studying all day,

it actually comes up with ideas and you're integrating short to long-term memory. You're cleaning out plaque that leads to brain aging challenges. And you're're dreaming some amazing things but most people don't remember uh for example paul mccartney came up with song yesterday in his dream you know mary shelley came up with the idea for frankenstein in her dream a chemist created the periodic table in his dream so what are we dreaming about so i write down my dreams next thing i'll do is i'll i'll get out of bed i'll just make my bed And what does that have to do with your brain? Your

brain loves a clean environment. It really does. It takes two minutes to do it. Plus excellence is a habit. How you do anything is how you do everything. So take two minutes and just make that bed. And how good does it feel to come back to a well-made bed? Or if you're in a hotel, you come back to a well-made bed. It just know just gives you that joy which is uh we can never have too little of i'll hydrate i'll have a glass of water i'll put there the night before and when i wake up i'll drink that because we can lose up to a pound of water at night through respiration and perspiration and just staying hydrated think about your money it will boost your reaction time and thinking speed upwards of 30 just staying hydrated throughout the day.

And so hydrate. I'll also take my probiotics because your God is your second brain. And then I'll actually exercise. And this is not my full workout routine, but they did a study. It was at Appalachian State University. When's the best time to exercise for weight management and deeper sleep? They test people in the morning, afternoon, and evening, 7am, 1pm, and 7pm. I said 7am. And it doesn't have to., and 7 p.m. I said 7 a.m.

And it doesn't have to be your full workout. It could be just three minutes. And so you do that. And those who did that got upwards of 70% deeper sleep, 70% deeper sleep, just working out, getting your heart going in the morning. It's very important also for everybody to get some sunlight first thing in the morning because you have these circadian rhythms. And one of the best ways of getting a good night's sleep is to see sunlight first thing in the morning, not through your windows, but if you can go outside for five or

10 minutes or go for a brisk walk, you know, it takes time, but also makes time, you know, back in productivity. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back. Now for some more Money Rehab. So you became homies with Oprah and Elon, Will Smith and many others. You bonded over books, but then you guys worked together. Can you tell us some of the common issues that celebrities and CEOs come to you with and what advice you give

them? Yeah, with actors, I get to help them to speed read scripts, to be able to memorize their lines, to be able to present them confidently on camera and to have better focus. And, you know, like there's this story I put in Limitless where I mentioned we have 60,000 thoughts a day and a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions. And I remember I was with Will and he was shooting a superhero movie in the dead of winter and it was a night shoot. And we had spent the day going over something I call the dominant question, like the question we ask more than any other question. For some people, it might be, how do I get people to like me? Which you could know a lot about a person's life or their personality based on that question, because that directs their focus, right? They're a martyr, people take advantage of it, they're a sycophant, their personality changes depending on who they're spending time with. Well, my dominant

question growing up as a kid was, how do I become invisible? Because I had this brain injury, I didn't want to be seen, I didn't have the answers from teachers. I would sit behind a tall kid. I would sit all in the back. Um, later on it became, how do I make this better? Cause I wanted to fix my broken brain. And I started getting answer, answer answers. Well, his dominant question wills is how do I make this moment even more magical? How do I make this moment even more magical? And, I remember that night, it was two o'clock, and we're shooting, it's freezing outside. And his family's there from West Philly, you know, you know the song, and I'm there and we're shivering. And during the break, he makes hot chocolate for all of us, even though there's a crew that could do that, right? He brings us all

blankets, he starts cracking jokes, he starts telling stories. And I realized that he's living his dominant question. How do I make this moment even more magical? And it's interesting because I believe the life we live are the lessons we teach. The life we live are the lessons we teach other people. And to know what your dominant question is. And so I don't know if you, if, if intuitively, you know what that question is, because a lot of times it's unconscious, you know, but that dominant question directs our focus and those focus determines how we feel and how we feel determines what we're going to do right you know like questions you could ask are things like you know how do i get the most out of this moment right and like another

question is when they're learning how can i use this why must i use this when will i use this you know i think your most powerful productivity performance tool we have is our calendar. But most people schedule investor meetings, job interviews, you know, meetings with a parent, teacher, whatever. But they don't schedule their own like growth, you know, the things that they need to do. And it always comes last. And a lot of people are out there taking care of everybody else. And they put themselves last.

And, you know, you talk about putting, putting on your, your mask first, you know, part of self-care is not only what you eat and going to the spa, part of self-care is realizing when you say yes to somebody or something, you're not saying no to yourself, right? You need to become this empty vessel that you always, you know, that you need to be able to take care of. And I think that's part of the money. I think it's part of memory. I think it's part of our life. How much correlation do you feel is with money and memory? How much of bad financial habits can be attributed to, well, I think a lot to bad mindset, but what about to memory that hasn't been worked on? I think a big part is memory. I think a lot of it has to do with memories we have as children with

money, you know, and that, that, that, that it was encoded and stored. And when we retrieve it, every time we're triggered by a commercial or by something, a friend, you know, says, or somebody's advancing somewhere, it pulls up all these memories. And a lot of those memories come up as emotions, you know what I mean? It's not even like a visual, maybe they, maybe you picture them, but a lot of these things we don't have like conscious recollection of, but it's just, we have this angst around money because of something that, you know, our parents fought about when we were kids. And it's just a feeling.

You know, Maya Angelou said, you know, what an amazing poet. She said, people will forget what you say, they'll forget what you did, but they'll always remember how you made them feel. Right? So I think a part of money is a feeling that we have around it. And those feelings are tied in our nervous system in this, in the form of memories, you know, and then the good thing is we could create new memories at any given time.

Right. We could celebrate small wins with tiny little steps that we take that whenever you remember to do something or you do something good for your personal wealth, then you could sell, take a moment to celebrate. Like when do people actually take a moment to, they're so good at nitpicking the things that they do bad and tearing themselves apart and not giving themselves credit at all for when things go well, but even rewarding yourself. So even if you say, you know, I want to work out, you know, sometimes too big, but maybe

you put on your running shoes and just, just reward yourself for doing something a little like that. You know, this is yellow victory or something silly. Right. But all of a sudden you start having a positive association around the things that you should do. Cause as you mentioned, you know, like about knowledge, it's not power, right? Common sense is not common practice. A lot of people know what to do, but they don't do what they know. You know? And I think that if we understand how our memory works, we could work our memory. Just like if you understand how your brain works, you could work your brain. If you understand how money works, you could work that better or a lot better also. And when I wanted to know what was possible with memory and money, I was expecting you

to teach me how to memorize numbers. But you actually hit on something that potentially can get into people's way or trip folks up more than the numbers because the numbers like a fifth grader can do when it comes to your money. It's all the humanity stuff. It's all the interpersonal stuff that fucks people up the most. And recently, I had this experience where living with my boyfriend, he was like, you always leave the lights on. Like, why do you leave the lights on all the time? Like, just turn the lights off. And I was like, well, you know what? It all of a sudden hit me.

I had to turn the lights off when I left your room because otherwise we couldn't afford to pay the bills growing up. And I was told you can't flush the toilet to save on water unless that's number two. And all of a sudden, like I am a grown ass woman. I mean, kind of. I have a bunch of finance books. I have a bunch more on the way. I have a whole show about money. I know all the things about money. And this like weird memory that I kind of like smushed away all of a sudden came up and like threw a wrench in it all. That's wild. And the good news is right now that, that our past, you know, the expectations of others, you know, our experiences, our external environment shape who we are today, you know, but I think it's important to remember for everybody that we are a hundred percent responsible

for who we are today, you know, and who we're becoming for, for tomorrow. And I think a big, like if I was, I get this question, like, like if you could, you know, that nine-year-old boy who was just, you know, felt like he was broken, what would you say to them? And I would, besides saying that, you know, you're, you're enough and this, this story will, will get better. It would be that, you know, you are a hundred percent responsible for your life. You know, we talk, I talk a lot about superheroes, um, things I splurge on. I don't, I don't splurge on a lot of things, but I, like I have a 10 foot Hulk in my backyard, you know, cause I, I wanted to relive my childhood. So I do that every day reading. I taught myself how to read by reading comic books late at night. Cause I took me three years longer to read with my brain

injury, you know, but I had this, this real connection to superheroes. And I remember I got to introduce two of my modern day superheroes together it was richard branson and stan lee and um the late stan lee um and we were in the car and i asked stan um you know you create all these superheroes who's your favorite and he says jim it's iron man and i was like he's like jim who's your favorite superhero and he had this spider-man tie i said spider-man and when I said Spider-Man, without a pause, he goes, with great power comes great responsibility, right? In his iconic voice.

And I, maybe because I had three traumatic brain injuries before the age of 12, I tend sometimes when I read to reverse things or hear, I change things around. And I was like, Stan, you're right. With great power comes great responsibility. And the opposite is also true. With great power comes great responsibility. And the opposite is also true. With great responsibility comes great power. And when we take responsibility for something, like we own it, we have great power to make things better.

And sometimes we all have the habit of complaining to blaming, to making excuses. And the truth is we can't be upset by the results that we didn't get from the work we didn't do. Right. When we blame and we make excuses, it does us a disservice because it wastes an immense amount of time and energy that could be put towards something more, more fruitful. Right. And so I would just, I have this, uh, people can't see this here, but on the top of my office, I have a portrait I got from Stan Lee. It's completely made out of candy. And he gave it to me and it's just, he was a big kid. And, but I just, I have it there because it reminds me of that, you know, for responsibility. I love that. I love all of your acronyms and I hope I remembered.

your acronyms and I hope I remembered. I'm like the mom one, the old one. I love them all. The three M's. Can I challenge everybody to do some one thing to listen? Yes. Yeah. I think we mentioned that knowledge is not power. It only has potential power that you have to act and take one small, simple step. I would challenge everybody. I believe the fastest way to learn something is to teach it to somebody else. You know, that when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. They call it the explanation effect. When you learn something with the goal of explaining it to somebody, if you had to get a TEDx talk next Monday about what you learned on this podcast, would you pay attention differently? Would you take notes? Would you ask more questions on social media? And one of the ways you could do it, everybody, I challenge you to take this one small, simple step is a screenshot, whatever,

whatever your list, whatever platform you're consuming this on right now, and tag Nicole, tag myself and post it and post one thing that you're going to do to have a better brain or one thing that you learned during this, you know, this conversation, you know, I believe a big part of what we're doing is transcending and it's about ending the trance. It's about ending this mass hypnosis, sometimes in marketing or media or self-hypnosis from ourselves that says we're not enough, that we're not smart enough, good enough, worth it.

And so what's one idea you've taken from this conversation? Post it on social media. Tag us so we get to see it. I'll repost it and share some of my favorites. And I'll actually gift a copy of my book, Limitless, to three of your listeners, just as a thank you for playing with us. Yay!

I love a good challenge. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. When networking, use a mnemonic device to remember someone's name or a fact they share about themselves. When you reach out to them next, drop that little memory nugget into the conversation. They'll be so impressed because people will remember you if you remember them first.

Rehab is a production of iHeartMedia. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Catherine Law. Money Rehab is edited and engineered by Brandon Dickert with help from Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Mangesh Hatikader and Will Pearson. Huge thanks to the OG Money Rehab supervising producer, Michelle Lanz, for her pre-production and development work. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.