Your Transformation Station - 64. Guinness World Record Holder Speed Reading Howard Berg

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Howard “Speedy” Berg has been recognized for setting the world record for speed reading. He is listed in the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records for reading more than 25,000 words a minute and writing more than 100 words a minute. Howard has appeared on over 1,100 radio and television programs including Neil Cavuto, Jon Stewart, and Live With Regis. His brain-based learning strategies have been hailed as a major breakthrough in publications like Forbes FYI, Selling, Men’s Health, Red Book, and Bottom Line Magazine, and have been featured in dozens of newspaper interviews throughout North America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Would you like to learn I be a genius? Yes, please. Like, I love fucking reading. I have not a bookshelf like that, but I have boxes of books from psychology to fucking anthropology to everything that people would look at and find that just like, why would you read that in your spare time? For some reason, brilliant, brilliant. It connects to something.

Thank you. Thank you. It can integrate. You're hitting a very important point right there. Doctors read medical books. lawyers read law books, business people read spreadsheets. When you read out of your niche, out of your comfort zone, when you cross over anthropology, philosophy, metaphysics,

things that you think are totally meaningless and useless to you, you get new ideas that no one else in your industry has looked at or thought of before. How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself? Join your host, Greg Favaza, as your voice on the hard truths of leadership, your transformation station connecting clarity to the cutting edge of leadership. As millennials, we can establish change, not only ourselves, but through organizational change, bringing transparency that goes beyond the organization and reflects back into ourselves. Extracting, extracting, actionable advice. and alternative perspectives that will take you outside of yourself.

Mr. Howard Berg, how are you doing? Hi, how are you? I'm doing all right. How about yourself? I'm good. Excellent. Welcome to your transformation station. Well, thank you for having me.

Of course. Am I coming through okay? Yes, you are. Excellent. Well, tell me about you. and your fantastic abilities in speed reading? I have the world record, the speed reading. It's about 80 pages a minute.

It's really a page and a half a second. So it depends on the size of the page. And different pages have different font sizes. So the words can vary. Bigger fonts have lower word counts. Smaller fonts have bigger word counts. So it's about 25,000 words and more. minute, but it'll vary based on the page size and the five.

That is awesome. Because I'm looking back at your information. You were listed in 1990 in the Guinness World, the Guinness Book of World Records. You did, what was it, 25,000 words in a minute? Yes. How did, like, how did you find yourself in that situation setting that world record? I could tell you my story how it got done. I started very young.

I lived in the projects in Brooklyn, and it was very violent. There were a lot of gangs. It was really bad. It was a website story without the dancing and music. I met Granato. He had a knife. He wasn't smiling. He put it to my throat, for real.

I found the safest place in my neighborhood was the library. because gang kids would rather be dead than in a library. So I went there a lot because it was like free base. And I got really good of reading. I was reading 3,000 words a minute when I was 11 at college reading. I went to the state university of New York Binghamton at 17 to major in biology. And in my second term of my junior year, I got interested in the brain, is a branch of biology called PsychoBiology.

So that's psychotic biology. That's Frankenstein. Psychobiology is the biology behavior. And I told the dean, and he said, you've had zero psych courses. You have one year left. You have to do the whole program in one year. And you also have to finish the bioprogram.

We have to take six science courses, two, four-hour labs. Lab reports were on slide rules, so it took 16 hours. So basically it's 40 hours of lab with the lab report, 18 hours of science. And to make it hard, I had to be jobs. I was working 18 hours a week. And he looked at me and he said, you're not smart enough. And that's when they realized they never taught me how to learn in school. They'll tell you what to learn and why to learn when you don't learn.

But not when you hear a song on the radio once you know your whole life. Then you read the seven habits of highly effective people. and you don't know any habits the next day. It's got a way to learn things that matter. You learn the songs. Well, there was. I got up to 80 pages a minute. I did the whole site program in one year.

I took the graduate record exam, which is an SAT for graduate school. Sure. Biology. And I reviewed my books. I had like 48 books from all the years. So there's biochemistry, self-physiology, genetics,

plant systematics. I wouldn't call that the lightest reading. And I read it. in three nights. It took the test. I got a 800. I got three questions wrong. So I was in the 99th percent tall in the world for biology. And then I wondered if it was me or the system. It's a big difference between. You can do something or you can teach something. So I taught kids 11 or 15 the same system. Howard, let's let's pause. You're hitting a lot of great stuff. And I want to ask you questions. You're a fantastic individual. Thank you. Yes.

So let's go back. First off, the library being the safest place, I can relate to that because I'm an introvert. And I've been to quite a different few universities. And one of my favorite places to be when I'm doing my studies is the library. So my first question for you to start this off is when did you actually pick up a book? What year? How old were you? I didn't say starting reading it was about three and a half, four.

Okay. Because it wasn't the theory of relativity. At that time, it was Horton here's a who. More along those lines. But at the time, it seemed like a really good book. I mean, for me, that was the Lord of the Rings when I was three years old. Lord of the Rings was a little above my pay grade when you're three years old. Interesting.

Okay. Okay. So now let's speed up the process a little bit. But now you're continuing to read. You got up to 3,000 words per minute. Did I hear you on that? Yes. Okay.

That's before I learned to read fast. That was my initial speed. Now, the normal speed is 200. The range of normal is 150 to 400. So 3,000 is a pretty high starting speed. Okay. This is like, I'm excited because I have bought quite a few speed reading books. And I've done the chunking method.

I've done all these little tracking methods. I've done everything. And it's like there is a plateau. And I just, I want to know how do you get past this plateau? I can help you with that. Actually, reading isn't learning. That's the first problem. If it was, even slow reading, if everyone reading a book got an aid, say reading was learning.

Most people consider learning how many hours they looked at a book and didn't learn anything, how many pages they turned and then understand. They said, yeah, I studied for five hours and I read 400 pages. Well, so what? You didn't remember any of it. You didn't know how to use it. What really matters is, do you understand what you're reading? Can you use it when you need it and recall it?

So most perioding programs really don't work very well. They're very good for, it's a biology book. It's a book about math. That's about it. But when you went to slow down and learn a word or an idea, you lost your speed, because they were very mechanical. I fixed it. So what I'm doing is much different.

I use reading to find what I don't know and need to learn. And that's one of the skills. What do you need to learn? What's your purpose? Two, how do you learn when you don't understand something? You read the calculus book. You memorized the equations. You have no idea to solve a problem,

which is a totally different level. Remember all the equations and I don't know what it even do. I have to work with them. Agreed. big problem in school. People learn, but they don't understand. The next level up is how do you remember what you just learned so you can use it when you need it? Different problem. And a big problem, how do you stay in the right frame of mind to use it successfully? If I teach you to drive, you're ready for your road test, you fail. Why would you fail? I got nervous. It was a road test.

You know, when you ever got nervous on a test, that's emotional intelligence. I'm teaching EQ skills, how to stay focused and calm. I'm teaching memory skills, how to retain and recall. I'm teaching comprehension skills. So even very technical material, like biochemistry can be understood. Reading skills, what to look for, how to know when you found it, and how to find it two to four times faster. And when you combine that, instead of just reading fast, now it's a learning system. But I just recorded this week a new, system. Because more and more people are not reading books. They're reading online. They use Kindles. They use phones. They use computers. They use iPads. It's different. It's not a book.

But they're still reading and they're still learning. So I'm just coming into the 21st century. I don't think anyone's done this. How do you speed read on an electronic reader and study? How do you study on a phone with a tiny screen? How do you learn? How do you? you learn when you're standing on a line, you only have one hand. You have nothing to type with. And there are strategies that you can do that will allow you to do very high level learning in very short amount of time, even on a phone. So that's what I'm working on right now. And it should be ready in the next week or so. We just did the first draft. You know, you go through many drafts. When you write a professional program, you record it, you view it,

you see what you like, keep what's good to add to it until you say, that's, it, it's perfect. Understandable. Now, with what you're implementing in your strategies, I want to see if it's relevant, excuse me. So what those strategies, excuse me, again. I'm married. I know real pain. I actually have a very good marriage. I'll be asked, I tell you, my first marriage was a storybook marriage of what she's Stephen King wrote the book. So I have a really good one now. She's a wonderful person. She's my best friend. So I think being in the wrong relationship is probably one of the worst experiences you can have in your life.

Being in the right one is probably one of the best experiences you can have in your life. But I used to think happily married was an oxymoron. You can be happy or married. But at the same time, and yes, it's possible with the right person. I love your sense of humor. That's fantastic. Now, with these strategies, okay, so with my understanding on how I was trying to boost my speed reading along with reading comprehension, I would usually go through the book and I would

just highlight in my own mind like, okay, main topics and just I see things like everything is connected in a way. And for the things that I don't understand, I try to connect it to something that I admire that I want to learn more about. So whether I have to connect it to one thing, to another thing to another thing in order to actually want to learn it like math. But what I do is I do a combination of things such as the chunking method. I definitely don't speak or try to say things out loud. That slows me down. But I'll combine that with chunking and then trying to look at the book at a distance

to not have to move my eyes, but almost kind of zero in and kind of. and kind of skip the articles, whether it's like, duh, you, simple words like that, where it's just automatic, it's like, okay, and just highlight the very topic and just go as quick as I can, and I would time myself. Now, is that something, am I on the right track? That's my biggest question. You're on the right track, but I can help notch it up a few notches to make you work better. Please, please.

Let me give a few suggestions. First, a better way to take notes. When most people take notes, they do what you do. They write down what they're learning. And that's fine, but that's only one third of what you can take notes on. And this is both for live and written materials. So if you're at a classroom or a business meeting, that's how most people take notes, what they're hearing. Here's what they're missing.

So I take three columns in a word document. column one is what you're learning, which is what you're taking notes on now. Column two has two functions, insights. Why is this relevant? How is this significant? Any background information? How is this related to something you know already elucidating and going more in depth? And another thing I do, which is very, very powerful.

What did the writer or the speaker do? They made it interesting. Did they tell a joke? did they tell a story, did they show a slide? Whatever they did that made me say, oh, boy, that's amazing. That's something I can use when I'm writing was speaking, because I know it got my intention. It made me jump out of my chair and say, wow, that was great.

And I just found something that could help me be a better presenter or a more gifted writer. And I write that in the second column. Now the third column, this is a big one. How will you use what you just learn? So what happens with a lot of people is they take notes, they highlight. They never do anything. They just leave it there.

That's as far as it goes. Now, let's imagine I go to a Dan Kennedy seminar. I used to work with Dan a lot. We were friends. And he just told me a way that I could double the amount of sales I have in my program that I could use in a marketing campaign. So in the third column, after I wrote down the technique that he taught, And the third column, how I will use that technique when I get home for my next marketing campaign,

specifically what I'm going to do with it. Now when I go home, I look at the third column. And all the things that I intend to implement and use, I use them. I take one to five things a day. Some of them take longer to implement than others. And I start using them. And that's where the learning really happens. When I'm using the strategy, I'm employing me.

strategy and I see my income double or triple. I don't have to work at remembering something that tripled my income. My brain will say that was fantastic. I want to remember this. This thing just tripled my income. It's no brainer. But the problem most people have is all they do is what you're doing is writing down what they're seeing and learning without how they'll use it and why it's significant or how it applies to other things. One other caveat, there is actually a free program online called Obsidian, O-B-S-I-A-N. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. But Obsidian does what you're talking about, where as you're taking your notes, you think of a link to something you just learned, to something else relevant to you.

And you hit the open left bracket twice, and it lets you create the link instantly to the other concept on another page. And link them and link them instantly. So those are two things that should help you in what you described. If you'd like, I could go further and actually tell you what you want to learn and what to look for. Please, like this, like, I'm a big fan of this. So this is fantastic. This is great for the comprehension.

And before we go into it a little bit more, for people that don't understand that are, they're doing the old-fashioned way where they're, they're reading and rereading, what's the difference from trying to memorize and regurgitate versus actually comprehending the information that's being read? I can give you a very good example. I'm going to teach you signing. 1492 Columbus discovered the new world. So I'd ask you, who discovered the new world? It said, Columbus, great.

What year did Columbus discover the new world? 1492. Fantastic. What have you told me? Pretty much nothing. What my school would say is what was the effect of his discovery on the indigenous people? What impact did it have in Europe on their religious beliefs that the earth was flat? On the colonialism and the wars that were fought over territories on the amassment of wealth,

like Spain were all the gold from the Aztecs and the anchors over to Spain, which made him a very wealthy country. Now you understand the significance of the discovery. Knowing what year it happened, the name of the person doesn't begin to give you the insights and the meaning and the significance. It was a new country. It was a new world. It was like someone went to another world and discovered a new planet. It was enormous.

But most people will learn a name in any year. And that's the problem with just memorizing. You know, I was teaching a science lesson. about the five causes of disease years ago. And I asked if they could give me one of the causes. And kids said, yeah, bacteria, that's a good answer. What's a bacteria? And what do you mean said, it's one of the five causes of disease?

And that's how most people are learning. They know the word. They can answer it on a test. They don't know what a bacteria is. Are they all good? Are they all bad? How do you stop an infection? You cure an infection.

How do good ones help us? How bad ones harm us? Now you're learning. You're thinking. You're going past simply learning a word or a name or a number to understanding why you need to know it, how you're going to use it, and how it connects to things you've already learned to make something brand new and innovative that no one's ever thought of before. That's a much deeper level of insight and significance than simply, regurgitating facts that have no gut significance to you other than you can answer it on a test. That is fantastic, okay?

Because this is why I wanted you on the show, because I wanted to illustrate this to leadership and organizations that they can read all these different things online and start implementing it, but they need to know how to critically think in the moment when there are contextuals, when there's factors, when the situation is not black and white. And this is fantastic. Absolutely. By the way, berglearning.com is my website, and we do have some free programs. They can try free lessons.

And I do work with companies around the world. I become like they're forced to CLO. I'm working with Courtney now in Utah. They have a lawsuit. They're putting together with a million pages of documentation. Someone has to read it and find which of the pages are relevant to their case. And I can read 80 pages a minute. And I understand the subject area that they're working in.

So I'll read a million pages. And then I'll tell them out of the million pages, these are the 200. Your lawyer needs to use to win your case. The rest of it is not relevant to what you're trying to accomplish. It's information, but it's not information that's going to matter to a judge. this is the information. I do that, or a company might have a couple thousand pages of data they need read to make a business decision or start a new product or a program.

I'll read it and then say, okay, let me give you the cliff notes. This is what's in there. This is what you need to know. And let me answer your questions. So that's kind of what I do. I do it for them. That is really cool. So Howard, I know this is a little outside the wire, but I want to just ask you.

I was wondering if you could give me a little demonstration with one of your your fantastic book collection you have there. If you could just pull something out and kind of just illustrate your talents here. Oh, he's going to do it. Hell yes. I want to have a book that actually has something. Okay, he's not about successful speaking. Okay.

I'll just pull this over here. I have to put it on the table. It's all right. It's all right. Looks like it's about 400 pages right there. Okay. So it's the first chapter. It's him and his wife, Sheila, and they're up at night.

It's a night before he's doing like a first big presentation. And he goes and he does his presentation and he doesn't get any money. He doesn't make any sales. And he's trying to figure out, what did I do wrong? How did I bach this? What can I do to fix this? And then he writes a book on. Five steps are getting booking gigs, getting paid, and building your platform.

So after that, he did a self-analysis and he looked for things he could do to improve his performance. And that's the first chapter of the book. Holy shit. That is so cool. Like the superpower. I'll tell you, can you a funny story about that? Yes, please. I don't like to read.

I like to learn. Okay. To me, reading is a screwdriver. I don't say, wow, what a great screwdriver. I make things with it, right? So about 10, 15 years ago, I was actually on cruise ships, and my wife wanted to go to Hawaii, and they had a cruise to all the islands.

And if they picture, you go for free, which is not bad, free cruise to Hawaii, right? So I told them I'd like to speak on speed reading. They said, well, they don't want that. Well, I'm like, what do they want? Because I want to go. Because they want someone to teach photography, video, and phone. And I said, I teach that.

I didn't teach that. But I learn very fast. I can read 10 books in three hours. And the rule is if you read 10 books and you know where you read, you're an expert. I'm thinking college, you take 8 to 10 classes in a major. You're an expert. So I read 10 books on Photoshop in three hours. The next day, 10 books on video.

And the next day, 10 books on photography. And I was like, please let these people not know what a camera is. They walk in and say, they don't use film? How did they take pictures? Boy, where's the film? That was my perfect audience. Well, that wasn't my audience. The first gentleman walked in, he said,

professional photographer, 38 years. He wants me to teach him how to take pictures. The second guy is using Photoshop for five years. He wants me to teach him Photoshop. My wife's in the front crying. They said, if we didn't do it, they throw us off the boat. Not in the water, but we got to shore. And they did.

They threw people off. Wow. So at the end of the week, they're like, how many years did you study to learn all that information? I didn't say I learned it last week in three hours. But that's what I do. Now, imagine you're in business. And I had an 84-year-old read three books in three hours. So a normal person probably do a book an hour, really comfortably.

So imagine for the rest of your life, you read a book like Photoshop, marketing, selling, communicating. Every day you learn a new business skill, every day, 365 skills a year, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. What do you think it would do to your business? How much more money would you make? How much more profits would you seek? That's what I do. These books are about things I need to know to do my work better. You can read a novel, but my personal preference is I'd rather watch a movie or relax. with a TV show than read a novel. I prefer to learn things that'll make me better at what I do, more knowledgeable, more up-to-date what's happening in my field, more competitive, stay ahead of the competition. To me, that's what it's about. Think of Blockbuster.

They put everyone out of business with a model no one could compete with. They put train loads of DVDs, and they can rent them out cheaper than most places could even afford to buy them. And they were doing fantastic. They were doing a blockbuster income. To Netflix says we don't need a store. We could just send it in the mail.

Who needs stores? So they had a very unique, they're like $9 a month, all the DVDs you can take. And people are like, what do we need blockbusters? We can get all the DVDs you want for $9. And that worked really well until a looking red box and said, we don't need the mail. You can get a 99-7.

movie, whatever you want, in front of your supermarket or drugstore. The difference was Netflix changed their business model. How many people do you know get DVDs in the mail from Netflix? They change it to online programming, which Blockbuster could have done. Yes. They had the network. They had the customer base. They could have done it.

They never thought of it. They went bankrupt. That's what happens when you don't stay on top of them. information. Someone else will think of what you need to do before you do and what made you successful today in your business. It could put you out of business. I'll go one more example. Second richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos. He was the richest. It goes back and forth. What day of the week it is, right? Elon Musk is up there now. Maybe tomorrow will be Bezos. Who knows? But right now he's number two. What's his business model? It's the model that J.C.

penny and Sears used at the turn of the 20th century when people were moving out west and there weren't any stores, they used the Sears and J.C. Penny catalog. And they would ship it by Railroad and Wells Fargo. And that's how you got your things where there weren't a lot of stores. They made a fortune. Well, Jeff Basil said, I'll put it online. He put a well, he put a J.C. Penny catalog online called it Amazon. So J.C. Penny and Caesar are the brink of bankruptcy. Well, they actually declared it already. They never thought to put the catalog online. They had the supply chain. They had the infrastructure. They had the marketing acumen. They had 100 years of experience doing catalogs. No one ever said, hey, why don't we put it online? But Bezos did. He's the second richest man in the world.

They're out of business. And that's why. why it's so important to stay ahead and learn. It isn't about I want to read. It's about I want to get by in a knowledge-based economy where everything's based on what I know. And the more I know, the better I can do what I do. And if something terrible happens like it did to Netflix, I'm ready to make the change quickly. Instead of going on, the Netflix is just as successful as it ever was. Probably more so, but it's online streaming because they thought, ahead. They changed their business model based on current developments. Most companies aren't doing that. They're relying on work yesterday and work tomorrow and they're going to be the next

blockbuster if they keep doing that. That's where I come in. I show them how to learn and understand and innovate and that's something we can talk about how to be a genius. Wow. That is a fantastic delivery. I mean, you brought up a lot of great points. Now, For those people that have that older mentality of feeling like what they're doing is just enough, what would you tell them about the importance of speed reading and also the comprehension of it and how it not only affects their business on income and relationships, but it also affects their culture. What would you suggest to them? It's more than speed reading.

It's speed learning. Speed learning, yes. And learning more information quicker and better. Here's three big problems that businesses have. They don't even know they have that are costing them a fortune. The first is language. If you use words that are meaningful to you, like SEO, I know it, you know it. The people who don't know are the ones who need it.

If they knew it, they already know it. but they don't. So when you start throwing words around that they don't know or understand, you're confusing them. You're not making them more comfortable. You're making them feel dumb. And like, what are you talking about? It doesn't make sense to me.

You have to be careful how you use language around prospect or client and use words and meanings and significances that resonate with them where they are, not where you want them to be. Two, what are you doing to make sure they can remember and recall what you're telling them when they need to use it. How many people have given you good information by the time you got home you didn't remember it and what happened? What makes you think the information you're giving them is any different?

But at the time they get home, they don't remember it. And what happens? You lose a customer. You lose referrals. What if you didn't just tell them what they need to know? But how to remember it later when they need to know it? What would that do? And the third one, this is a big one, EQ.

I mentioned if I teach you to drive and you fail the road test, that you got nervous. What if I did just teach you to drive? But how to stay calm and focus during the test? How many more of my students would successfully pass the test? Give me referrals and testimonials. So many of the failures people have, because they're in the wrong state of mind,

to do what you told them correctly. What are you doing to fix that? So there's more to it than simply reading. It's about using knowledge more effectively, more proficiently, and empowering other people with the learning they need to do what you're telling them successfully. So they'll come back for more. That was great. I got exactly what I thought I would get. I'm accomplishing what I thought it'd accomplish.

You gave me very good a plan that works. That's what a business really needs. but they're not doing that. They're presuming if they give good information, that's enough. But it really isn't. But that's the old model. That's the model that's been going on for so long. They just assume that's the only model.

And it's an old model that's no longer true in a knowledge-based economy. And that's some of the problems we address. How do you make your communications more brain-friendly? How do you make them easier to learn, understand, and implement? So the results people get are the results they paid for. And they aren't saying, I pay you a lot of money and nothing happened. It's a no-brainer. You definitely hit a lot.

Yeah. Well, that is, yes, you're spot on with all of that. Okay. You took me right out of my head for a second there. Would you like to learn I be a genius? Yes, please. Like, I love fucking reading. I have not a bookshould.

up like that, but I have boxes of books from psychology to, uh, fucking anthropology to everything that people would look at and find that just like, why would you read that in your spare time? For some reason, brilliant, brilliant. It connects to something. Thank you. Thank you. It can integrate. You're hitting a very important point right there. Doctors read medical books, lawyers read law books, business people read spreadsheets. When you read out of your niche, out of your comfort zone, when you cross over to anthropology, philosophy, metaphysics, things that you would think are totally meaningless and useless to you, you get new ideas that no one else in your industry has looked at or thought of before, and often will find something that's doing

well in another industry that's making them explode than no one's thought of doing in your industry, you're the first one, because you know it's already working in a different company for a different purpose, but you can retool it and refocus it on what you do, and you're the first one. And that's the reason we want to learn outside our niche. But most people struggle just to stay on top of the limited area they need to know. They don't have the time or the bandwidth to go past that. But when you learn to read two, three, four times faster with deeper understanding, it's no longer a challenge to go outside and bring in new ideas and new media.

and new new, new, new, new, new, fresh concepts that no one thought of before in your industry, but are common in a different industry that no one in your industry is looking at. The same reason you didn't look. They don't have the bandwidth. So with you, when you initially started out, you learned it's, it's not about obtaining more bandwidth, but it's about, it's about maintaining what you already have, but doing it more effectively. And expanding your boundaries, not like you said. You read anthropology and philosophy, which is exactly what everyone should be doing but don't.

Most of them barely read in your own area, let alone in another area where they don't see any immediate return or value. But that's where the real gold nuggets are. That's where nobody's looking and gives you that edge in your niche that no one's thought of. And it's really good that you're doing that. But if you'd like I could show you to take it up another notch. Please, please, yes. So there's actually three levels of learning. It's called literal implied inferential.

Literal is what's on the page. It's like Columbus discovered the new world. You'd say who discovered the new world to say Columbus. That's literal. There's nothing to interpret there. The next level up is implied. Implied is things you're supposed to understand without explanation. If I said, the man drank a glass of water, you don't go wait.

What's water? what's drinking, what's a glass. For how to explain every term, you wouldn't know what anything meant. So the writer has to assume some things are just understood. But that isn't always true because we have different experiences. Someone reading Moby Dick who lived in New England and someone reading Moby Dick who lives in the desert in Albuquerque may not have exactly the same experience because they didn't experience the same things with the ocean. So it can make a difference in your understanding. Sometimes when you're sitting here and saying,

am I the only one here that's dumb? Everyone else seems to understand this. They had an experience you missed. Somewhere along the line, something in their lives filled in a blank that's still missing in yours. It isn't an intellectual problem as much as you're missing a piece of knowledge

that they've had that you didn't get. The third level, this is the big one, is learning the meaning and significance. So let me do an example how this works. I'm going to do something literal. I want you to picture a giant circle and a dot in the center. So what are you picturing? A giant circle and a dot in the center.

Perfect. That's literal. And literally, how interesting is that? Be honest, because we know the real answer to that is it's not, right? That's not very interesting. I'm looking at as a target where I'm at my site. that on it. That's going up a level. Okay. That is what I told you

to do. I said, just think of a circle with a dot. That's it. And you're right. It could be a target. That would make it more interesting. But a circle with a dot, so you don't say, oh my God, a circle and a dot. Wow. And that's how most learning is. It's like go read this. Why? Because I said so. And it's like, I don't want to read it. I said you have to read it.

And you read it and say, I don't know why I'm reading it. I don't know why I have to do it. How many subjects in school are like that? Read this. I don't want it. You have to. And it's okay, but I don't want to learn this. And that's how a lot of people go through life. Reading things they don't want, don't need, aren't interested in. They don't learn anything.

The next level up. A circle with a dot in the middle is actually a symbol. It's a symbol of the sun. It's a symbol of the sun in astronomy. And because astronomy and astrology will once one thing, they're not anymore. It's also an astrology. So it's a symbol. That's more interesting, and it's a picture of a circle and a dot, but not a whole lot more. Now I'm going to tell you it's one of the meanings of life, a circle with a dot. This is where we go into learning to be more insightful and abstract.

A point is infinitesimely small. Everywhere you look, there's an infinite number of points. You can't see a single one that are too small. So it represents, it symbolizes spirit, something that's everywhere and invisible. Wherever you look, God's there and you never see it. So it's everywhere and nowhere. It's a perfect symbol of something that fills all space, and no matter where you look, you can't see it. A circle is a boundary. Everything in the circle is self. Everything out of the circle is not self.

So what does it say? Every self at the center is one thing, spirit. So everything is one thing, looks different, seems different, acts different. You and I are at the center, the same thing speaking to itself. Brotherhood isn't just a euphonism. The human race is a reality. We're one cell in an organism called humanity. And we're no better than the weakest person in our family

and no stronger than the strongest person in our family. Everyone's pain matters because it affects you, and everyone's success matters because it affects you too. And so when you're doing good deeds for other people, you're actually helping yourself at the same time. You're building the family. You're strengthening the group that you're part of. Is that a little more interesting than it's a circle with a dot in the middle? That's very interesting. That's what business people need to learn to do.

I'm going to give an example in business. This is a smartphone. In the late 80s, early 90s, phones look like Captain Kirps communicator. Those were the big breakthroughs. They folded over and they opened. Oh, look, I got a Star Trek phone. That was what everybody wanted. Yeah.

Steve Jobs looks in and says, you know, I could put a, I could make the screen a monitor, and throw a chip in it and put a operating system. And not only would make phone calls, but it could do a lot of, of other things. I'll make software that runs on. I'll call it an iPhone. How did that work out? I think he made some money with that. And then he thought, again, he said, you know, I can make it much bigger and I'll call it an iPad. How did that work out? Pretty well. He had a vision. Everyone else saw a phone. He saw an opportunity to create a mini computer that acts like a phone. and he made billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars.

That's what business people need to be doing. They need to be looking at things. Everyone else looks at differently. That's genius. Seeing what everyone sees a different way. And that's something you can learn how to do. It's a learnable skill. Now, Howard, that is you have yet to see.

You just keep going. You're fantastic. Now, when. You're thinking like this, when you have this pioneer mentality on an idea, when you're trying to present that and people think the complete opposite of what you feel about something, how do you get past those people? You can't always get past them. Look at where our world is now.

There's a lot of, we're in tribes. There's a lot of polarization. They live in two different worlds, but two completely different set of facts. If you try to address your set of facts to someone in the other group with a totally different set of facts to look at you like you're out of your mind, it doesn't make any sense. What are you talking about? It's not easy.

But there are ways to do it, but it's difficult. I can actually show you how it could be done if you want. Please, please. Because it's related back to a more fundamental problem, which is what do you do if you're depressed or anxious or nervous or have a feeling? how do you reprogram your mind? Because it's really the deeper question. How do you change someone's program from where they are

or where might better serve them? There are a lot of people out there that are nervous about money or disease or there's a lot of things people worry about. So let me show you to eliminate that because it's actually a fixable problem. The brain doesn't understand negatives. So I'm going to control your mind. mind right now and you won't be able to stop me. No one can stop me. Everyone listening,

I'm going to control your mind too. And you know I'm going to do it. And you still can't stop me. Don't think of Mickey Mouse eating pizza and what popped in your head. Okay, I just made you think of Mickey Mouse eating pizza, didn't I? You didn't want to. You tried not to, but you couldn't stop it. That's language. It's a whole science to language. It's a whole science to language. and how it affects the brain. Now, negative states don't exist except in us. There's no depression out here in the world. It's in our head.

Yes. When you try to stop it, that's the worst thing you can do. I won't be nervous. What happens? When you use a negative, I won't be nervous. Your brain is I'll be nervous. Yes, you can be more nervous. You'll be depressed.

Whenever you say you won't do, because you're trying to stop it, will strengthen it. The unconscious brain will be focused on it and vivify it and give it more life. You're throwing fertilizer or you're throwing gas on the fire. How do you stop it? You don't. You focus on the opposite.

If you're depressed, focus on how happy you are, even if you're not. If you're anxious, focused on how calm and relaxed you are, even when you're not. as your mind changes focus from the state that's holding you back to the state that'll take you forward. The old state never existed. It only existed when you thought about it. You're not thinking about it. You're thinking about the other state that would bring you forward, relaxation, calmness, joy.

And as that grows, not in a second, it takes time. As you nurture and develop it, the life. force that kept the depression and anxiety alive in your mind dissipates. It goes to the other force, the force of calmness, joy, happiness, whatever it is you're focused on. So you don't uncreate a state. You create the state you want to be in instead. And you focus on the new state, the new direction you want your mind to go in. The other side disappears without any focus or attention, it ceases to insist. Howard.

Yes, let me stop you. So I'm curious about that with when we're trying to transition from an uncomfortable state to a comfortable state. And now this is in the context of being under pressure, whether we're going to do a public speaking event. I'm trying to control my breathing. I'm trying to relax myself. So I know I will be the very best that I prepared myself to be. Now, I've been in this situation numerous times and I have tried different avenues. And the one that I found successful for myself was to look at why I feel the way I feel and take out the emotion behind that, but reflect back on an achievement that I, that I have, something that I have overcame and something that really stuck out.

and I kind of harness that good feeling that I felt when I overcame that obstacle and I seem to bring it into the present existence, right? I'm about ready to do it. Perfect. That's another technique. It'll work. You're taking a state that you've created under and you're changing your focus. You're changing your focus is what I told you to do. You change your focus.

You're focusing on a positive state that you've experienced. and now you're vivifying that state and bringing it to life in the present. Remember something very important. There's only one time now. It's always now. Einstein said time is an illusion. There is no future. There is no past.

That's part of what our brain works with. It's the only decisions you make are in the present. The only actions you ever took are in the present. Nothing you've ever done has been anything but in the present. You can anticipate, you can reflect, But everything you've ever done any time in your life was now. There's only now. That's the only time that ever truly exists is now.

And so when we create a state that we want, it becomes the state we're in. Now, I'm not going to say that's easy. It's not. It takes commitment. It takes willingness. It takes willpower, a desire to make a change. A lot of people. right now that are polarized don't want to make a change. They feel their position is correct.

It's the only position that could be correct and they have absolutely no desire to make a change. And until the desire exists to go into a different direction, there is no new direction because people don't make change unless they want it. It takes effort. It takes work. The beauty is it's doable. I can tell you, I'll take a very strong, charismatic leader with a positive energy to motivate enough people to want to make that change. Like a Kennedy. Kennedy was, you weren't alive then, you're young, but he was a brilliant speaker. He was a brilliant, wasn't a great husband. I'm not going to give him high marks there.

But he was a brilliant man and a brilliant speaker. He was a good leader. He was a good leader. So someone with that level of influence and charm and charisma in a positive way could move people in another direction, sort of a Jesus kind of figure. Okay? That would be another good example. It's hard not to like him.

I don't care what religion you are. What's not to like? I was born Jewish. What am I going to say bad about him? Nothing. Everything he said was a good thing. Everything he taught was a good thing. So whether I believe in the religion or not,

I believe in the teaching of doing what he taught because it's a good way to live. It's the right way to live. It's a positive life-changing philosophy, regardless of your religious beliefs of faith. So there's a good example of someone who could change a lot of people's thoughts. Right now, I don't see anyone. that has that magnetic, magnetic, magnanimous personality that people will look at and say,

oh, my. I like Biden in a lot of ways, but I don't see him as a charismatic speaker or someone you live, say, oh, my, it's not like, ask what your country could do for you. He doesn't have that. He lacks that quality of like, wow, what a brilliant speaker. He's a nice guy. I see him as grandpa. Would you like a sucking candy?

Your grandpa's got you. I mean, I don't see him as a bad guy, but I don't see people like saying, oh, my God, what a brilliant speaker. That's not knocking him. That's the truth. And until we get someone who's at that level of a Jesus

or a Kennedy or a boot or someone with that kind of powerful, driven, positive, life-changing energy that people will listen to and say, you know, I've been listening in what you said, and I think I need to start changing what I'm doing. I never really thought about this way before. When that person comes, that can make the change. I'm hoping it happens, but I don't know.

Nobody does. Yes, that motivates the hell out of me because that is what I'm trying to do here. leadership today. I want to do it in the most bold, benign outside the lens way that will be humorous, but also intellectual and drive change. That's my life. That's exactly what people say, what are you doing? I'm trying to help people learn more and understand better. I'm not telling them what to think. I'm not telling them what to believe. They have to do that on their own. But I'd like to think if they learn more and understand more and connect the dots better, They'll make better choices.

No one reads the papers that says this is too many smart people making too many good decisions. And they'd be right. So my job is to empower more and more people, successful people like yourself with the skills they need to take it to the next level to learn more information, faster, better, learn how to communicate it more effectively, learn how to innovate, make changes that will change the, the world for a better plate. I can't do that by myself, but if I reach enough people, I can do it. Let me solve a problem that's insolvable. That's a big one.

Like how do you go totally green and make money for oil, gas, and coal, create hundreds of thousands of jobs and eliminate the national deficit? Let me do that in 90 seconds because it is a doable, so there is a solution. Electricity is made primarily by rotating a coil of wire and a magnet or a magnet inside a coil of wire. That's pretty much how they make it. How do you rotate it? If you have the Niagara Falls would be a good place to do it, but that isn't everywhere. So what do they do when there isn't a Niagara Falls?

They make steam. And that's where the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear fuel come in. They boil the water. Well, in Iceland, there's another option. It's a volcano. and they use the magma, which is so close to the surface, to boil the water, which is essentially green. They're not burning anything, which is great. So if America was a volcano, we could do that.

But most of us realize it's not, but they'd be half right. One of the biggest super volcanoes in the world is Yellowstone, and it's on federal land, and it's loaded with water. So imagine oil, gas, and coal companies invest in building, geothermal power plants. It's got to be easier to find magma and yellowstone

than a new oil field. I'm pretty sure they found most of the big fields. The magma in yellowstone is right by the surface. That's why it sprouts out hot water. So you build the geothermal plants with people

whose jobs would be changing in oil, gas, coal, and related industries. You help them build the infrastructure and maintain it. which will be an enormous project, but very profitable because it's an limited amount of energy. And where is it? It's on public land. So you charge a usage tax for using public land, and you put the tax towards paying off the national debt.

And by the way, there's two other places this could happen. In California, there's a ski resort that has a volcanic activity underneath that could do this. And also in New England, in the Vermont Massachusetts area, there's a big pool of magma that hasn't percolated out of the ground yet, but it's there.

So they could do this in several different locations. Would this work? I think it could. But it shows that you can't solve problems when you look at what everyone else is looking at in a different way. Wow.

That is awesome. Just that right there, just expanding your reading outside your own avenues can really bring in some great ideas that can take your company, your own life to the next level where people wouldn't even expect. Is you like another one? Yes. Okay. An unsolvable problem. You know, we think of the universe as starting off as a singularity before the big bang and it grows out. Where does it go?

Where does it go? It's everything. So where does everything grow? It is everything. So here's a possible answer to how that could happen. Imagine the universe is actually a manifestation of consciousness. If you think about the Bible, that's what they're describing. There's a being that says let there be a universe.

And there is. So it's a consciousness that's willing it into being. So let's assume for a moment the universe is primarily a consciousness. So I want you to imagine in your mind, mind, an infinitesimal point, the primordial point, and then explodes out in infinite directions at faster than the speed of light. Notice the infinitely tiny point and the infinitely large expansion all happened between your ears. And so an expression of consciousness, a universe can be tiny and grow infinitely large and still occupy the same space in consciousness.

It doesn't need to change. It could be the infinitely tiny point between your ears or the infinitely large universe between your ears. A thinking universe, one that's born from a conscious being, who could grow infinitely large and still occupy the same space. It always did because it's growing in consciousness. And so space and time are meaningless in that scenario. And that would explain how you can get an infinitely large universe

starting from an infinitely tiny point, and it grows infinitely big and still occupies the same space it always did. I thought that was, holy shit. Okay, so I thought that, and not in that intellectual way, but I kind of looked at outer space

as like a representation of our own consciousness. But I never thought, like, what, you just took it up, like, a hundred notches. So that is mind-blowing how, wow. I can't, I got no speech.

It doesn't mean them right. But that's what business people need to do. It isn't always about being right. It's about being innovative, creative, and thinking differently. And when you have the capacity to do that, you can do it to other problems that are more down to earth, more real to your company and your success. And I just want, I know we're getting close to the end.

I was going to say, so people go to bird learning.com. My name, howly, Byrd. We have reading, writing, memory, and math. If they want to email me, it's how it at bird learning.com. I work with companies. I train them on how to learn and think and use information to innovate, be creative, stay ahead of the competition. And hopefully we can all make a better world as we become smarter and better at what we do. The collective, everyone together, doing better than they did before, makes everyone's lives better

and everyone moves forward from that. And that's my passion. I want to be a catalyst to change in the right direction to help build a better world. And that's why I'm here. Howard, thank you so much for your time. You've hit every question without even having to address the questions. But I will be sure to link everything in the show notes

and drive the audience your way. This was a great experience. humongous takeaways. I'm going to have to re-listen to this a couple more times to grasp what's been said here. So is there anything you would like to leave the audience with that you have not in a way to address? Yes, sir. I'm a grandparent. And I think of the future.

We're leaving our children global warming, exploding deficits, hate, exploding hate. We have just so many issues going. on everywhere you look, I think these kids deserve more than just problems. We should be educating them how to be smart enough to fix some of the problems. With giving to them, I look at companies that are struggling as artificial intelligence takes away more and more markets and eradicates more and more jobs. What are they going to do to stay viable? They have to turn to a new kind of technology. They have to learn faster. They have to understand more. And they don't know how. And I look at seniors that are struggling to not be vegetables when they get older. They don't want

Alzheimer's and dementia. That's what I do. I teach people how to use their mind to be able to succeed in business, stay mentally fit as they get older, and make sure their kids are smarter, have a brighter future than the one you had, which is not guaranteed anymore. When we were younger, if you went to college, you worked hard, you had a future. That isn't true anymore. If you're not smart and you can't change quickly, you're going to be in trouble. And no one wants to see that happen to their kids. So I'm hoping they'll go to my website and give me an opportunity to share with them what's working so well around the world with them. I do have a support team that helps. And if they fail, I help. Personally, I want everyone to get what they paid for

not just pay for something and you get it. I think that's an important part of business. Do what you. Deliver what you promise. Don't just take people's money. And that's what I wanted to share. Thank you. Thank you, Howard.

This was a great experience. I really do appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. You've been listening to your transformation station, your voice on the hard truths of leadership. We hope you've enjoyed the show. We hope you've gotten. useful and practical information.

Make sure to like, rate, and review the show. Remember, your transformation station is on all major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube at YTS, the podcast, and visit the website at yTSthepodcast.com. Till next time. It's tax season, and at LifeLock, we know you're tired of numbers, but here's a big one you need. to hear. Billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud.

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