Be Limitless!

The first book that I’ve finished reading this year is a perfect one to kick off my learning journey. The book is titled “Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster and Unlock Your Exceptional Life” by Jim Kwik. For those of you that already follow the author on his platforms, this book might not be offering something new. For me, this is my first encounter of his work and I could say it’s one of the most practically insightful book that I’ve ever read. After reading this book I increase my commitment to read from 36 books a year to at least 48 books a year. I already finish this book in a week by instantly practicing its recommendation and I do feel confident for the road ahead. I do recommend you to read this whole book by yourself not only to help you read more, or start to read in case you want to start a reading habit, but also to learn more (effectively and efficiently) in every aspect of learning. I will provide a very short summary here as a teaser (although you can easily visit https://jimkwik.com/ or https://www.youtube.com/user/kwiklearning for a more appealing and complete one).

Let’s start with the Limitless Model. 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. 

Therefore, you should learn to have Limitless Mindset, Limitless Motivation and Limitless Methods:

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

First thing first is the Mindset. You need to start by reframe your limiting beliefs. To do this you should:

• Name your limiting beliefs, such as your belief that intelligence is fixed; we (can) only use 10 percent of our brains; mistakes are failures; knowledge is power; learning new things is very difficult; the criticism of other people matters; and genius is born.
• Get to the facts. Get some real evidence. Are you really terrible at speaking in public? Are you really the least interesting person in the room wherever you are?
• Create new beliefs, such as (from the limiting beliefs above) intelligence is actually fluid as long we have a growth mindset; we can use our whole brain if we learn to; there’s no such thing as a failure, only failure to learn; Knowledge x Action = power; when you learn new ways how to learn, the challenge of learning new things can be fun, easier, and more enjoyable; it’s not others’ job to like, love or respect me. It’s mine; genius is not born, its’s made through deep practice.  

The second thing is the Motivation. 

• Start with Why. Find your passion and purpose. Finding your passion is not about choosing the right path or finding the perfect professional destiny. It’s about experimenting to see what ignites your joy. Passion comes when we rediscover our authentic, alive self, the one who has been muted and buried beneath a pile of other people’s expectations. Passion is what lights you up inside. Finding your passion is like finding true love, in that you have to go out on many dates to get the perfect match. Purpose, however, is about how you relate to other people. Purpose is what you’re here to share with the world. It’s how you use your passion. 
• Passion and purpose will provide you with energy, as well with mental and physical vitality. Motivation is all about energy management and optimization. Some recommendations for generating limitless brain energy to support the mental and physical vitality are: (1) have a good brain diet; (2) consume brain nutrients; (3) have some exercise; (4) kill your “automatic negative thoughts”; (5) try to live in a clean environment; (6) get a positive peer group; (7) protect your brain from injury; (8) keep learning; (9) manage your stress; and (10) get enough sleep. 
• Take small simple steps. Break your goals or tasks, especially the ones that you’re procrastinating about, into smaller pieces and start doing it. Create a new habit using WIN: W is for Want (make sure you really want it); I is for Innate (choose the new habit to adopt is something that you’re good at or you know you can be good at—if you have a growth mindset and grit, you can be good at anything, but not everything, you want); and N is for Now (create a prompt/cue for yourself that encourages you to perform the new habit now).
• Get into the Flow. You can find it by eliminating distractions, giving yourself enough time, doing something you love, having clear goals and challenge yourself…a little. Be aware of the enemies of Flow which are multitasking, stress, fear of failure and lack of conviction.

Last but not least the methods. Methods are the procedures or processes for accomplishing something. In this context, method is the process of learning how to learn, also called meta learning. There are five areas on this:

• Focus. In order to achieve focus you need to practicing concentration and calming your busy mind. Tools like meditation, yoga, and certain martial arts can be tremendously valuable in helping you calm your busy mind. But, some shortcuts are: taking deep cleansing breaths; do something that has been causing you stress and schedule time for distractions.
• Study. There are seven simple habits to unlimited your study: (1) employ active recall; (2) employ spaced repetition; (3) manage the state you’re in; (4) use your sense of smell; (5) music for the mind; (6) Listen wit your whole brain by practicing HEAR (Halt, Empathy, Anticipate, Review); (7) take notes more effectively by using TIP (Think, Identify, Prioritize).
• Memory. Improve your memory by relying on MOM: M is for Motivation, which is if you want to train yourself to have a stronger memory, give yourself a stronger motivation to do so; O is for Observation, which is condition yourself to be truly present in any situation where you want to remember something as most of the time when we fail to remember something, the issue isn’t retention but rather attention; M is for Methods, which you need to read the book yourself for this.
• Speed Reading. Boost your reading speed by using your finger as visual pacer; push yourself to read faster (monitor your current state and have a deliberate practice to improve from there); expand your peripheral vision (the span of letters or words that your eyes can see in a single glance); and counting (count out loud as you read).
• Thinking. Try to use as many as possible of de Bono’s “six thinking hats” (white hat—when you’re in information gathering mode; yellow hat—you try to bring optimism/the positives to your thinking; black hat—you deliberately pivot from looking at good side of the challenge to facing its difficulties and pitfalls; red hat—you allow emotion to come into play; green hat—be on creativity mode, exploring new ideas; and blue hat—you’re in a management mode, thinking from the big picture). Be aware of eight distinct forms of intelligence (spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, linguistic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic). Know your learning style (visual, auditory or kinesthetic). Use mental models, such as the 40/70 rules (Colin Powell’s ‘never make a decision with less than 40 percent of the information you are likely to get, and to gather no more than 70 percent of the information available’ rule); create a Not-to-Do list; study your errors; and second-order thinking. Think exponentially by getting to the underlying problem, post a new approach, read about it/learn from references and extrapolate.    

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