Original subtitles

From 2010 to 2015, I slept 90 minutes a night. Do you know one strong person

that had an easy life?

Technology is doing the thinking for us. We're not building those mental muscles.

Reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body. I say mind before media.

If your mind is empty, read.

But if your mind is full, then write. They are the pilot of the brain, not the

passenger. I'm concerned that natural intelligence will become artificial.

We are raising the dumbest generation due to AI.

The brain rot, doom scrolling, short form content.

We're going to be more easy to manipulate. This is what's going to stop

you from getting Alzheimer's disease forgotten. sake and we are not doing it

jim thank you for coming on the podcast today oh thanks for having me i'm

looking forward to this we're going to be talking about ai and intelligence

today on the podcast and you are a brain expert and i've been dying to talk to

you and really pick your brain no pun intended before we actually get into ai

and the brain in my perspective when i look across the board i look at the data

on ai and gen z and what it's doing to their brain and to be honest it's quite

terrifying so before we get into that can you just quickly outline what

exactly ai is and do you believe that we are raising the dumbest generation due

to ai wow that's a great opening question to the conversation um as a new

father i'm 53 i have a three-year-old and a one-year-old so the next

generation is is paramount for me um so what i would say is The school system

itself has always had some challenges, right?

So if we're to kind of contextualize this, it was kind of like an industrial

age, one size fits all, treating the manufacturing date as our birth date.

And, you know, the challenge is school also teaches us what to learn, you know,

and what to think and what to remember, but not necessarily how to do those

things. So I spent the past 34 years teaching people how to learn better.

how to read faster, how to remember what they read, how to understand things

better, how to think more clearly, how to focus at will, which is a big

challenge nowadays.

Now with technology, it's certainly amplified things.

You know, with AI, I mean, you saw the studies, like even the recent MIT study,

right?

and I'm sure your audience is very sophisticated, but the summary of it is

you have three groups of college students. They have to write essays.

Group A uses ChatGPT. Group B uses Google. Group C doesn't use either, and

I'm oversimplifying this, but then they did the brain scans, and they tested

also. cognitive tests like on memory.

And yeah, obviously people could intuit that it was group A that had the least

cognitive engagement. They had the least amount of recall because I believe

learning requires effort. Just like when you talk about, you know, deadlifts and

using your body, it's one of those things where it requires effort for it

to grow. And our brain, while it's an organ, it responds more like a muscle.

It's use it or lose it. But if I put my arm in a cast for a year, it wouldn't

grow stronger.

It wouldn't even stay the same, right? It would atrophy.

My biggest concern with kids is that if technology is doing the thinking for us,

then we're not building those mental muscles, right? They call it cognitive

offloading. And just human beings, we do this, right? You write a shopping list

or use a calculator when you could do mental math.

And it's okay for, I think, some tasks.

But the challenge is, like, you don't go to the gym and have someone lift weights

for you.

That would be kind of ludicrous.

And so real learning requires deep work and friction. But if AI is removing all

the friction and it's just spoon-feeding you answers, then we don't have to

think.

Then all the content we create on AI, you know, it becomes generic, right?

Because then we're not using our own critical thinking, our own creativity,

you know, our own judgment. And what happens when, as a society, I mean, the

generation certainly, younger generation, but what happens as a

society where we're raising people who are mentally lazy?

Right. And then I think also we're going to be more easy to manipulate when we

can't judge. We can't sort through misinformation.

Yes. We can't critically think, analyze, you know, look at new data, change our

opinions based on that data.

If we're spoon fed that information, it's just like, you know, here, like if

someone's office or apartments on the sixth floor, an elevator is a form of

technology. Right. And you could take that and it's very convenient.

But also it's important like also to be able to take the stairs sometime, right?

But we always make that choice.

But I've just, it's not just the cognitive offloading. What I'm concerned

about is cognitive surrender.

Because, you know, the brain's only about 2% of your body mass, but it's an

energy hog, right? So it's easier for something to do the work for us. You

know, thinking takes effort.

You know, it takes energy. You know, it takes focus.

And I also feel like if we don't use it, then we lose it.

And so the younger generation, I mean, it's a challenge. I mean, everything

from the food to the pollutants in the air to also there's pharmaceutical. I

mean, there's a large mix of things, but also it's the brain rot, you know, all

the doom scrolling, all the short form content, you know, and I can appreciate

for what it is. We use it to get our message out, but it's also training

people to have very little attention span.

You know, my mother became a special ed teacher to help me with my learning

difficulties. When I had my traumatic brain injury, it took me three years

longer to learn how to read. I would have migraines every day. I had poor

focus. I was put in special education.

And I don't envy teachers, you know, especially with kids growing up. My

generation was video games that, you know, teachers were competing with. Now

it's like they're, I mean, think about the stimulus.

children are watching on television, on YouTube and everything.

It's super stimulating in terms of the colors, in terms of the lights, in terms

of the sounds.

Yeah. And then you've got the dopamine circuit. So it's also messing with the

neurotransmitters. And that baseline changes.

And, you know, people can't even be bored anymore, especially children.

You know, they need to be entertained. And I think that's a big challenge also

as well, because I feel like in that boredom, that reflection, that

introspection is when we come up with our greatest insights and wisdom.

I loved what you said about cognitive offloading. I want to talk a bit more

about that because the reason why I said, do you think we are, you know,

raising, you know, the dumbest generation is because of the 2024

headline that came out about brain rot.

Kids just...

and even adults right just just mindlessly scrolling dumb content and

you know neural plasticity the more times you see one thing the more times

that you believe it and then it messes with your dopamine system and it messes

with your ability to think to learn to grow new neurons to grow new synapses as

well and this is what cognitive reserve is this is what's going to help us when

we are 80 90 preserve our cognitive functions and who we are this is what's

going to stop you from getting alzheimer's disease for god's sake and

we are not doing it even though the mere act of writing and i know you speak

about this a lot there was a wonderful japanese study where they looked at all

of these women who

preserved cognitive functions throughout their lifetime to about the age of 100

and when they looked at them and studied them they realized that these women were

writing they were handwriters they were reading so my problem with with what we

are talking about today and my inclination to get this out is because a

we're not reading enough we are outsourcing absolutely everything to ai

even

I started my career as a mathematician.

I'm now getting on my calculator to figure out 20% of the bill when I go out

for dinner. I was at a client event recently, and there was 10 of us. And

four people, when the bill came, took out their phones to divide by 10.

And I wish I was joking, too.

It disgusts me.

Can you talk to me a bit more about what cognitive offloading is?

So it's using something external to be able to do the mental work for you,

right? And so it's like that calculator. It's like writing a list.

AI would be an extreme example for it, where it's doing the actual thinking for

us. This year, actually, is the first time that reading and math scores were

down. for this generation.

And it is, I'm very concerned about reading, being an advocate for reading,

teaching, you know, one of the top reading programs in the world online.

We got a lot of data. And actually, there was a story in The Atlantic just

came out recently, and it said 51% of individuals will not read one book

this year.

And it's actually 16, only 16%.

of the populace across age and ethnicity and gender, 16% is only, they read

daily, only 16%. Yeah, actually 100 million Americans don't meet a sixth

grade reading level.

That should be very concerning.

And, you know, because I think also reading is to your mind what exercises

to your body. I find that reading also, people don't have the attention span,

right? And reading is a wonderful way to build your focus muscles, right? To be

able to not be distracted to be able to not go especially on the phone like i do

most of my reading not on not on audio or on my phone just to get away from my

device you know because you know we live in a time where we're on our screens all

the time but cognitive offloading i'm very concerned because it's where

technology is doing the thinking for us it's like gps right

if if there's a piece of technology that tells you when and where to turn you

never have to develop the cognitive muscles the visual spatial intelligence

or anything else and it's unlike the uh you know, the London taxicab drivers,

right? Like 26,000 streets that they have to be able to memorize and they see

their brain changing, especially in their hippocampus and all these

thousands of landmarks that they have to be able to do that.

And, you know, that's neuroplasticity in action.

Neuroplasticity requires novelty and it requires nutrition, right? Just like...

building muscles right you give it some novelty you give it some resistance and

then you feed it proper nutrition and then you get proper sleep where the

muscle is growing same thing with your neuroplasticity the challenge again with

this generation or any age of stage of life if the technology is doing it for

us then we become we become mentally weak because we're cognitively

surrendering that it's like if i have to go to the bank eight blocks away and i

take a lift or an uber

very convenient technology can be very extremely convenient but then I don't

get my steps in so that was an opportunity and who am I to say like how

much what percentage it's really you know for me There's a quote in Limitless

that says, life is letter C between the letters B and D, or B is birth and D is

death and life C is choice.

And we always make these choices, you know, every single day. The challenge

though, Duke University was talking about 40% of our behaviors, daily

behaviors are unconscious.

They're completely habitual.

And when did we design those habits?

You know, and this is a habit, right? Like scrolling, doom scrolling, you

know, and looking at this short form content. And especially like that this

is... the brain rot is there but now there's this bed rot where people are

sitting in bed and they're on their phone for like two hours at night and

they use the

explanation where it's like i had a really hard day this is my stress relief

and everything um and obviously that's affecting their sleep not just the blue

light but also the content and the stimulation right but i always i always

just from a practical standpoint for anyone who indulges in this is not a

judgment thing this is like i wouldn't spend two hours at night stay up later

than you should when you're complaining about sleep and being tired for some for

an activity that you wouldn't wake up two hours earlier for like if you

wouldn't wake up at 4 a.m to doom scroll and do all that thing. I certainly

wouldn't stay up an extra two hours to do that at night.

You're often

talking about the difference between artificial intelligence and human

intelligence. And you have this love for human intelligence and preserving human

intelligence throughout our time. You've written an entire book. In fact, you've

got a new book coming out, Limitless Daily.

And this talks about 366 keys to train your brain, master your mind, and win

every day. And it's all focused on human intelligence.

It is. What is this fascination with human intelligence? So I realized that

my work over the past 34 years, when I teach, whether it's speed and smart

reading or memory enhancement or focus or flow, or brain optimization or study

skills, what have you, it's all for people to become more humanly

intelligent, meaning that my big concern is that artificial intelligence, you

know, it's on the rise, right?

I'm concerned that natural intelligence will become artificial, meaning that

AI...

First of all, for people who use it at work, AI is no longer your competitive

advantage because everybody has access to it. It's like information.

Information is no longer a competitive advantage because we all have access to

all the information.

AI can amplify and scale, but it can only amplify and scale what you bring to

it. It can magnify, but the question is, what is it magnifying?

Like somebody could use AI to create a nice social media post. Another person

could use AI to create the next billion dollar venture, right? Or solve the next

big medical condition, right?

And so, but it's the human intelligence that dictates the performance or the

results. Like the way that you prompt, for example. Yeah, AI could give you,

I'm not even concerned about AI giving bad answers. Certainly it could do that.

I'm concerned that we've lost the ability to ask good questions, right? So

it's like a...

I get to work with a lot of sports figures.

f1 drivers it's like you have a multi-million dollar piece of technology

that race car which is like ai but it's the human that's going to dictate the

performance it's their intelligence their strengths their traits that going

to dictate how well it could as opposed to somebody coming in so if somebody

comes in if it's amplifying if someone's confused it's going to magnify that

right if someone's clear and confident it'll magnify that also as well right

and that that's the result because ai is a multiplier and the question becomes

what is it multiplying it's multiplying what we bring to it and that's our human

intelligence our ability to create our ability to make connections our ability

to also just uh emotional intelligence right having compassion empathy ai could

feign empathy but it doesn't know how to grieve you know, how to support a

grieving child. It doesn't know what forgiveness is. It doesn't know what

loss is. So it could feign those things.

But I would say that, you know, the challenge with all of this is while it

produces a lot of data, human intelligence determines which of that

information is important, right? Human intelligence determines what that

information means.

Human intelligence decides what to do with that information, right? And I feel

like I'm actually really optimistic.

I feel like potentially we could go down a very flourishing world of humanity

where in order to be valuable in the workplace, we're not going to out

process or out compute AI, like no human being could do that.

So in order for us to be valuable, I feel like in the marketplace, we're

going to be more valuable by leaning into our human intelligence, our EQ, our

ability to create understanding.

Right to have curiosity our ability to create meaning and purpose our ability

to adapt to learn to unlearn to relearn Because I think that's the you know

Having cognitive flexibility is so very important nowadays where you could

change your opinion based on new data or an organization That's cognitively rigid

like a blockbuster

won't exist anymore because they had didn't have cognitive flexibility like

they don't do the mental parkour exercises they it's like an organization

like kodak who did who created the first digital photography but they didn't want

to you know that to use against themselves and then they're extinct also

as well so that's cognitive rigidity so i want to circle back to manipulation

because i'm in this world of uh of cognitive performance and alzheimer's

disease and specifically

talking to a lot of women, you know, aged around 40 and above, and they are

marketed to on a daily basis of what to eat, what to wear, how to act in order

to stop a disease from happening. And you can be easily manipulated.

How do you think AI is enhancing that aspect?

So I feel like if we're offloading our own ability to evaluate information, to

self-assess, to introspect,

It makes us, also with people's brains nowadays, when they're sleep deprived

and they're neurotoxic in the environment, we become more susceptible

to be manipulated or influenced by outside forces, people that have

authority or some kind of agenda, because we're just exhausted, right? And

so between that and AI, where if we are offloading our thinking to something

else, then we're not thinking for ourselves, then those cognitive networks

aren't being...

strengthened. Our ability to use logic, to be able to sort through

misinformation, to look for, you know, comparative evidence, our ability to use

solid critical thinking or judgment. If those aspects, those cognitive networks

aren't being engaged and we get mentally lazy, then I think we're going to be

more susceptible to other people's agenda and more easily, whether it's

through media, whether it's through marketing.

Also, even with our own self-talk, I think a lot of what we're doing is

transcending. It's ending the trance, you know, that through marketing and

media that we're broken, that we need to be fixed, or we're not enough, or we're

not going to be loved, or even our self-hypnosis, the things that we're

saying to ourselves on a regular, you know. But I would imagine it creates a

perfect storm.

I mean, this is very meaningful to me. I actually lost my grandmother to

Alzheimer's. So when I had my brain injury when I was five, I had learning

disabilities challenges until...

age 18.

My parents immigrated to the United States, so we didn't have much.

My dad was 13.

We live in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at that didn't speak the

language, so we didn't have a lot of external resources.

But because my parents had so many jobs, my grandmother was raising me, and then

she started showing early signs when I was going through my challenges, and she

passed when I was seven.

We actually donated the proceeds to Limitless. We sold a couple million

copies for Alzheimer's research for women because, as you know, women are

twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. Most of the

research treatments have been done on, you know.

male brains.

We've also used funds to build schools for girls in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya,

provide health care for their families and clean water.

you know when they're so they're not sick so they could go to school but this

is something i'm very passionate about so you know i definitely shared mission

there i've been using jones road beauty for a while now and one of the reasons i

keep reaching for it is because it completely changed how i think about

makeup for years i thought looking polished meant layering on more products

what i've realized is that the best makeup actually lets your skin look like

skin that's what jones road does and they do it really well They just

released their Miracle Balm, which I'm absolutely obsessed with and it's become

one of my go-to products.

Simply, it's healthy, it's natural and...

It makes you not feel like you're wearing makeup.

And they've also launched a foundation stick, which is exactly what I wanted

for the days that I need a little more coverage. It gives medium to full

coverage, but it still feels incredibly lightweight.

It never looks heavy or cakey, and it's backed with ingredients like ceramides

and sodium hyaluronate. So it feels as good as it looks.

It takes me less time to get ready. I carry fewer products when I travel and I

still get that effort. look so for a limited time they are giving a free full

-size mascara with your purchase when you use code louisa at checkout just go

to jonesroadbeauty.com and use code louisa after your purchase they're going

to ask you where you heard about them please say the neuro experience podcast

you've mentioned cognitive reserve and i love cognitive reserve because i truly

think that this is what's going to help us fight against these diseases can you

explain what that is and why it's so important to work on that every day. I

mean, cognitive reserve, I'm going to oversimplify it, but it's like your It's

like a savings account, right? You make those deposits in a savings account for

a rainy day, and what helps to build those deposits?

Social connection is important.

Also exercise and building that cognitive reserve.

And, you know, my focus has really been on new learnings, you know, always

learning. You know, there was a study done, I think it was called Aging with

Grace, with those nuns. I call them super nuns that were living 80, 90, and,

you know, that was oversimplifying, but they found their longevity, emotional

faith and gratitude. But the other half was they were reading, they were

writing, they were having discourse and debates, right? So they were mentally.

strong and you know I also feel like you know we have students in every country

in the world online and and we get a lot of data and this is anecdotal but you

know I see the the two dips that people complain about with their cognitive

performance is usually when people graduate school because I think

unconsciously they've associated or learned something that's not true but

that learning stops when your education stops, right? Like your formal

education. And then also when people retire.

Often when people retire, they don't use their minds in quite the same way.

And that slips. And then once that goes, our bodies aren't usually far behind.

So the more that we insert into this bank called cognitive reserve, the

larger, like it compounds every single year. And so when it's there and it's

sitting there in that savings account,

It can be there to protect us against a war, for example, an economic decline.

And these wars and economic declines are diseases and other things like that. It

can help protect us, right? But you can withdraw from that every day.

The withdrawals are what? Sleep deprivation.

All the things that would be, yeah. And so like my thing is, and I like, I think

it's important to have desired difficulties, right?

Like deliberate discomfort because it's just like working out. If it's easy,

it's probably not getting a great workout, right? You might at best

maintain what you're having, but, you know, with challenge comes change,

whether it's your body or it's your brain also as well.

And so having those reserves are very important. But of course, like stress,

you could wreak havoc, you know, chronic. stress on the brain, especially

the hippocampus, lack of sleep, surely, poor nutrition, you know, and not just

not eating just great brain foods and neuro nutrition that we both talk about,

but also, you know, the processed food, the inflammation, the glucose spikes,

you know, all the challenges that come with it.

Leading a sedentary lifestyle, you know, will drain that reserve also as well. I

think it's important as your body moves, your brain grows.

And I don't just mean working out.

you know, every other day or 30 minutes, 40, whatever, each day, just moving

throughout the day. I think that's so very important.

And also just atrophy in terms of lack of use, right? That's my big thing. Like

I talk about cognitive flexibility, right?

But I also talk about cognitive anti-fragility, where I define it as

resilience is like bouncing back.

from a stressor or pressure, right? You bounce back from some kind of hardship

or difficulty or demand.

Anti-fragility is like you bounce forward. You actually grow stronger. And

you see it in nature, right? Whether it's working out your body, you give it

the same amount of weight over time, it becomes easy, right? Because you got

stronger. You see it also in nature, right?

I mean, you have heat adaption, you know, because you have more anti, you

have a greater anti-fragility physically.

You have a child's immune system.

They're exposed at an earlier age to more soils, more bacteria, and their

immune system will be stronger because of it and become more robust.

The challenge is our life is really optimized for comfort.

I mean, it's not like a hunter-gatherer. We have the convenience of temperature

and light and food on an app that we don't have to necessarily work for.

And I'm for those modern-day conveniences, but I also don't want to

make me weaker. Like, I don't know.

And I would ask your listeners, do you know one strong person that had an easy

life?

Because I think with struggle comes strength.

Because I had my learning difficulties, people say, oh, do you wish you didn't

have that accident?

My honest answer is no, because there's this post-traumatic stress.

But there's also this post-traumatic growth.

But I'm sure some people watching have gone through adversity. They won't wish

upon anybody, but they won't change it for themselves because through it, they

found a strength or meaning or maybe even a mission.

It's funny, right? Because we also think that.

we sometimes we over recover meaning like oh yeah you know i'm you know and

this comes down to your body as well oh i've been to the gym already today and i

think we over recover uh both with our bodies physiologically and with our

brains and we think well why would i use my brain energy when i can just

outsource it to ai and it is very let me tell you it does become difficult to

really think

Thinking is difficult because it requires wattage in your brain, which is

energy. It requires a lot of energy to really think a thought.

And if we are just outsourcing that every day, then you're right, we do

become mentally weaker.

And more suggestible and more easily to manipulate when you are mentally

exhausted, you're mentally fatigued, you have brain fog, right? Easily

manipulated politically and relationships and with the food that we

buy and with what we're marketed to.

And you struggle from all this kind of mental fatigue or even decision fatigue

and then you go to somebody else's decision, what they're telling you

because you're mentally, you've used all of your decision-making muscles that

day. And that is a challenge. And I think this is one of the most important

conversations.

of our era, like how do you remain more deeply human in an age of AI, where AI

is doing the work for you? And I think in order for us to be valuable again in

society is we have to become more human.

We have to lean into...

For me, it's just an easy acronym. H is heart, like the compassion, the empathy,

the emotional quotient, right? Building that. The U is understanding.

Because I think curiosity, like the through line between a lot of the

highest performers and yourself included is you're curious, right? And because

you have questions about things, you want to understand how things work and

how it relates to each other and what's true and not true. And to validate that,

then it forces you to engage and it forces you to learn and to be able to

grow. But I assume everybody...

watching they've self-selected they they have that in spades you know the m in in

the acronym human is meaning meaning i'd still believe that purpose is something

like to be able to find not necessarily a one life purpose but to find define

meaning in things because while ai could provide data for you and it could You

could find patterns of your past. It can't decide what's meaningful to you,

right? And I think that's uniquely human. And then the A is adaptability,

to be able to learn, to be able to unlearn. I hope everyone listening, like

if we were to go back, you know, if you were to fast forward 10 years, that you

wouldn't have the exact same beliefs and convictions as you do now because then

we haven't grown any, right?

And so our ability to learn, also to unlearn.

things that we maybe are not true no longer true uh to be able to relearn i

think it's very important to be able to do that quickly and then the the n in

human is nexus and i just use that as a symbol for social connection you know

that um you might have also on our podcast we had the director at harvard

for the long study on longevity and happiness and we had diet was very

important um exercise very important um what they found was human connection you

know, would be extremely important. And I think that also lends to your

cognitive reserve also, you know, your sense of safety. Because you also borrow

your mirror neurons, which is like we imitate, we empathize.

Especially depending on what you're surrounded by.

You know, I always tell people, you know, they say we're the average of the

five people we spend the most time with.

And what are we doing? We're imitating.

W-A-T-C-H, watch. You want to watch these things. Words. We start using the

language of the people around us.

The A, actions. We start to behave like the people we spend the most time with,

unconsciously. That's the danger there.

The T are thoughts. We start thinking the same way.

In any area, we start thinking of the people we spend the most time with.

And then, finally, the C is character.

We start having the same moral compass.

uh standards values right as the people we spend time with and then the h are

our habits

Whether we smoke has less to do with our biological networks and more with our

social networks. If our friends smoke, but also if our friends read, if our

friends exercise, if our friends spend time in nature, if they spend time

enjoying life and doing other things, we're more likely to do that.

But we also, as part of our cognitive reserve and just our identity, we borrow

from other humans.

Our nervous system could regulate in some kind of coherence just being around

a calm person, like a calm loved one.

Or we also could borrow from a loved one. belief in ourselves it could give

us courage to be able to do difficult things so we are definitely social

creatures which is part of the equation here so I feel like those are the things

that make us more human I feel like people that will thrive are the ones

that lean more into their humanness one of the most beautiful things that I read

this year was the highest form of intelligence is metacognition which is

one's ability to think about their thinking.

And that requires depth.

Right. You think about it because you can sit there and I do this often now

over a cup of coffee. I think about my own thoughts. I think about why I

thought this, whether it was maybe it was negative, maybe it was a bit abrupt

or maybe it even was positive. But I want to start examining why I think this

way, why I think this way in all different facets. And when I learned

that and I started to actually practice this almost daily, you learn more about

yourself and you learn more about.

what direction you're going in, and what you want out of your life. And if you

can really dig deep into that and figure out where your thoughts are coming from,

you can either become the master of your own universe and your own life, or you

can just succumb to whatever is given to you through AI.

I relate everything back to physical, because the mind or the brain... The

brain is the thing you can see. The mind is something different. But it's like

the physical you can see. That's why in pictures I'm always pointing to my brain

or I'm always wearing a brain on my shirt because I want to remind people

that we take, going back to awareness, we take care of what we see. You see

your skin. You see your hair. You see your car. You see your clothes.

Because it's our constant awareness, we know it has to be a certain quality,

right? But we don't see the thing that controls everything, which is our brain.

Metacognition is thinking about your thinking, and it's that awareness, and

it's like a muscle, but it's just like...

If someone's dead lifting all this weight, people could look at the person

like, oh, they could do that because they're so strong.

No, they're so strong because that's what they're doing.

And same thing with metacognition. The more you do it, the better you get at

it. And so it doesn't require, because your brain is very efficient like the

rest of your body, the stronger it gets, the easier things are.

It's just like if somebody is physically strong.

You're a triathlete. You could go up a steep hill.

compared to the average person that's walking outside.

And you can do it with greater ease because you not only have technique, you

have fitness, right? And you have a level of health and also a mindset and

identity around that. But somebody who doesn't engage in those things, they

don't have the mindset or the motivation or even the methods to be able to do

that, that same hill could be difficult. It could take more time. It could be

effortless. full, it could be stressful, they could get injured, right?

And so that person who's more physically fit could go through life with a sense

of ease with better results and less time and also more enjoyment, right?

But it required that work.

But life is difficult for one of two reasons. Either you leave your comfort

zone and you do that work, or life is difficult if you stay in that comfort

zone. Then life gets very difficult, right? It's that whole parable where if

you just do the easy things in life, life gets hard over time.

You binge watch, you snack, or whatever.

Or if you do the hard things in life, life tends to get a lot easier.

Not because life gets easier, because you get stronger.

And so for me, I just want people to be mentally fit to build those kind of

reserves.

let ai remove all the friction of your life so that we still get the engagement

like we want in our body. One of the biggest misconceptions about aging is

that we suddenly just become weaker and fragile, but we don't. We gradually lose

the ability to produce energy inside our cells, and muscle is one of the first

places that we notice it. That's why I use Timeline. It's their supplement.

It's MitoPure. MitoPure contains urolithin A, which supports

mitochondrial health through a process called mitophagy, essentially helping

your cells renew the tiny energy factory. that power everything from

movement to recovery.

I take Mito Pure every single day. I actually take four capsules. You'll see

this if you receive it. And I take it specifically for mitochondrial health,

mitochondrial renewal, and for my muscles because it's about protecting

capacity. Timeline's clinically proven formula is now available at a new lower

price. Mito Pure now starts at $79. So you can go to timeline.com slash neuro

to get a discount.

is still with us okay we're never going to get rid of it and by the way it does

have um its positives it advancements in space and medicine and we get that so

it's here how you've you've trained some of the biggest people athletes

entrepreneurs celebrities in the world you train their brains specifically what

can we be doing every day to preserve our intelligence and preserve our brain

function like what is this book daily limitless limitless daily What is in

here?

366 keys to train your brain. I want to know every single one of them right now.

And it's great because it's a daily. Just like a daily Stoic or a daily

devotional pulls on Christianity or Judaism or something or Buddhism or a

daily Stoic pulls on Stoicism. This pulls from science of the mind, which is

psychology, or science of the brain, which is neuroscience.

And this, okay.

Give me your top ten. Yeah, okay. So the through line with these high achievers,

I can tell you three.

character traits as a through line and i could go through how we train these

things um number one i find a through line with these individuals and just

think of and i would imagine everyone who did a mental experiment and thought

about like somebody who's successful however you define success in athletics

and business and life they're curious right and so that curiosity sometimes it

gets squelched over time but they remain curious and that's what keeps them

driving to grow right yet another thing that I find that people who are

performing at high levels is they protect their attention.

We live in the age of attention.

And it's funny how we equate attention with currency, meaning...

Even the words we use. Like we'll say we pay attention. Are you paying attention?

Think about the word paying attention.

And just like because that's the one thing that's constant is everybody has

different levels of education, different amount of income, net worth, you know,

connections.

But everybody has 24 hours in a day, right? But it's interesting. If people

had to take out their credit card or their Apple Pay every single time,

they'd... paid attention to something like they go on facebook and they have

to take out their credit card and then put it in they would think differently

about how much time they're spending there and then if they go on instagram

take out that same credit card put it there people be thinking about how do i

protect my attention how do i save my attention and also how do i invest my

attention to something you know in the future you know that could be that could

be very That could give you leverage because limitless is not about being

perfect. Limitless is about progressing beyond what you believe is possible or

what you're currently demonstrating.

But leverage is limitless.

So I'm always looking for the high return of my time and my attention just

as I would with money or my own energy also as well.

So I feel like.

Those are important things.

Now, how do you train this, right? I find that the biggest breakthrough is

whether it's in business or it's in your body or it's your brain, it's not just

through a breakthrough.

It's consistency.

And it's little by little, little becomes a lot, right? We had James Clear

on our podcast years ago talking about atomic habits.

And he was talking about how 1% improvement a day over the course of a

year is a multiple of 37, right? So we get that little.

by little adds up a lot right like you don't nobody goes to the gym for a

weekend and they're fit for life nobody has one great conversation with a new

relationship and then the relationship is just you know on autopilot right and

so it would you don't eat one good meal and then all of a sudden you know you

don't have to eat any good meals after that so it's the consistency so

limitless daily was built on it's not just what's there it was created i wrote

limitless in six weeks because i had 30 years my first book and i had 30 years

of curriculum on this subject and for me writing is very therapeutic but it's

also how i learned the best also right i was i was right every single day because

you know this idea that if you're if you're if your mind is empty read but if

your mind is full then write because it helps to organize your thought you

really don't know what you know unless you love that yeah if the mind is empty

read read if the mind is full right right and you can organize your thoughts

and so for me writing the book even limitless wasn't for me to put it out in

the world it was i wanted to get my thoughts on paper and then i found my

level of expertise it dramatically improved because i organized that

information just like but i didn't use AI to do it or other technology because

the because like Retrieval practice the act of going in and testing and quizzing

yourself as difficult to do But it's far better when you're reading something

rather than rereading reading it twice better than read it ask questions right

to quiz yourself how much do you actually remember to be able to teach it

to somebody else because when you teach it it's the explanation effect right and

then you then you then you learn it twice right because you really don't

know it but if you had to give it if everybody had to give a TEDx

presentation next week about what they learned this episode they would focus

better they would take more thorough notes right they would own that

information and say it in their own words and in a way they they've learned

it and so this is a way of accelerating the learning which I think is important

which I I would say, you know, is a characteristic of high achievers. If

people have seen photos of me with the Bill Gates or the Elons or the Oprahs,

people always have, how we bond, we bonded over books, right?

You know, because you read to succeed. If someone has decades of experience

like you do and you put into a book and somebody can read that book in a few

days, they can download decades of insight and wisdom and learn from

experience and research that you've spent years and countless dollars to be

able to do with clients and distinctions.

in days right what better shortcut is that and that that's why i'm so

passionate about being an advocate for for reading because you have to read to

succeed right and so going back to limitless daily where like limitless

took only a couple months limitless daily took me over a year to write which

is long for me because i do everything you know just mostly when it comes to

mind efficiently but it came because I mentioned I have a three-year-old and a

one-year-old. And when my one-year-old was born, my wife's water broke when she

was cooking Thanksgiving dinner. So it was very memorable. But I write every

morning, every morning. What do you write? So generally, I've done this for

as long as I can remember.

Because I don't believe in multitasking well, right? It's more task switching. I

believe in monotasking. And I time chunk my cognitive activities as best as I can

throughout the day.

And I also know, like, my biology in terms of how my chronotype is expressing

itself, when I feel most creative, when I feel like best time to study and

everything else, right? And so that self-awareness is very important. By the

way, going back to the self-awareness and the metacognition, one of my

favorite movies is The Matrix.

It's the only movie I've seen, like, more than five times in theater.

In 1999, I remember this, taking the red pill. But when Neo...

Who's the one goes to see the all-knowing Oracle in her kitchen? She's

baking cookies.

I don't know if people remember this There's a sign above the kitchen door

and it says know thyself I think that's a lot what metacognition is right

knowing thyself and people get there are different ways they could journal they

could go to therapy They could have discourse with their friends They could

do some people do plant medicine like everyone's on different some people

meditate to find that I think life is two things having the curiosity to know

yourself And part of that is metacognition, the awareness of your own

thoughts. By the way, like Limitless, it was going to be called meta-learning,

which is learning how to learn.

But the other part is once you have the curiosity to know yourself and you know

your beliefs, you know your identity, you can send where you're imprinted.

Like I was called when I was nine years old, the boy with the broken brain from

a teacher.

that became my self-talk you know and so that was a lot of analysis there but it

explains a whole lot of my behavior and my feelings back then and my identity my

self-confidence my self-esteem right or lack thereof um so adults as a as a side

note adults have to be very careful their external words because they often

become a child's internal words every time i was in pick for sports because i

also had balance coordination issue with my brain injury um i would say oh i had

the broken brain every time i did badly in school which is every day i would say

oh because i had the broken brain so i that's why the self-talk so

So I would write in the morning for years, naturally, I don't know where I

picked this up, like things I'm grateful for, or I would write like my goals for

today or something I was just thinking about when I was sleeping or in a kind

of like creative theta state.

But when I was in the hospital and I look at my daughter for the first time,

I started writing to her.

because, you know, again, I'm in my 50s and, you know, God forbid something,

I've had three life near-death experiences.

One of them led to Limitless because I was in a car accident and I could have

died, maybe should have died.

And it made me think about legacy.

And then I just thought, it was very personal, but I was like, okay, I want

to do a book and have a baby.

And I signed the book deal that was offered me 10 years prior because it

made me think about I think death is a signal. It just reminds you that life is

precious and what I would leave behind.

And being a reading teacher, I felt like not putting what I had in my head into a

book made a difference. Now, this one was inspired different.

Where I write every morning, I...

When I was watching my wife holding my daughter, I started writing to her.

And I started writing to her as if I wasn't there, as if she was going to

have a bad day, like a hard day.

And I started writing passages, and I kept it up, like days that she didn't

believe in herself.

And then I wrote passages on fear of failure or looking bad.

you know, to some comparison standard on social media or whatever, or imposter

syndrome or negative self-talk or self-esteem issues, like all this stuff

or distraction or overload or burnout or all these things.

And then after doing that for weeks for my daughter, for them to read when

they're older, I was like, wow, I was reading it. I was like, this is.

something I could publish. And then I added the science to it. I talk about

the default mode network or something I study of something that validates the

idea. So every entry is one page that you can read in five minutes that has a

brand new idea, the science behind it, a two-minute implementation to give you

the dopamine of earning that thing, and then a new identity statement to

entertain and be curious about kind of pledging or committing to something.

And then we have a whole free thing where we send people questions every

single day because everyone's literally on the same page to focus on that day

because it stimulates your reticular activating system and you start seeing

the things that you're asking about.

And that became Limitless.

daily um and and what i realize is that breakthroughs don't happen again just

like the big transformations it happens with what you do every single day that

little by little a little becomes a lot magnesium is one of the supplements that

i recommend most often but it isn't just one nutrient, magnesium actually comes

in many forms and each supporting different functions throughout the body.

So I've been using Qualia Magnesium Plus because instead of relying on a single

form of magnesium, it actually combines 10 highly bioavailable forms of

magnesium along with more than 70 trace minerals that help support magnesium

throughout the body. It's a full spectrum magnesium system, not just

Another sleep supplement. I've made it part of my evening routine because I

think recovery is one of the biggest drivers of long-term brain health and

physical performance.

If you want to experience the most trusted magnesium for purity, potency,

and performance, you have to go to Qualia.

Plus, it's non-GMO, vegan, and gluten-free, making it a choice that you

can feel good about. Just head to qualialife.com slash neuro for 50% off.

And here's a bonus. Use the code neuro for an additional 15% off your order.

That is qualialife.com slash neuro and use code neuro.

Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode.

Here's the magic that everyone could take away from this conversation.

When I was doing research for this, it wasn't just what I wanted to put in. out

in the world because we started surveying clients and community and find

out their their their biggest challenges and I started writing on that and it was

very personal for me but I was also not what you're reading but when you're

reading it and so I was talking to a number of sleep experts because that's

one of the challenges I have I have very severe sleep apnea that I'll talk about

from 2010 to 2015 I slept 90 minutes a night What? 90 minutes total for five

straight years.

And, you know, that's why in Limitless I talk about how to have limitless

motivation, but it has to do with purpose, having reasons, like engaged

emotional reasons to do something, like for me to get on stage when I'm an

introvert in front of 200,000 people a year or be on three continents or

whatever. The E is energy, because sometimes...

an exhausted mind can make a coward of anyone to do the hard things when you're

sleep deprived or whatever and then the small simple steps right where the

question i ask myself at least 10 times today is when i feel stuck or

overwhelmed i say what is the tiniest action i could take right now that'll

give me progress towards this goal where i can't fail so if i talked about you

read to succeed if people aren't reading 30 minutes a day small simple steps like

opening up the book. Who can't do that? I read one line in the book. If I want

to give my kids, my three-year-old, the floss, I give him the floss with one

tooth. I need him to stop at one tooth, right? Or if I want him to clean his

room, put one sock in the hamper, right? Because then you get the dopamine, and

that's what the small, simple step is, right? This misnomer that you have to be

motivated to take the action, or you take a small action, and then you get

the dopamine, the molecule motivation, and then you create consistent action.

And so all of my life's work has always been like what I wish I would have

known. And so with this sleep deprivation, there there's also benefit

right like when i had learning challenges my struggle became my

strength my two biggest challenges was learning and public speaking because i i

would as a kid i even think about it like i was looking at old photos uh when

i was a kid i would be shrinking down all the time my posture was like this

because i didn't want to take a blast base because i don't want to be noticed

i don't want to be bullied and i definitely don't want to be called on in

class right and so i was phobic of public speaking and life has a sense of

humor because what do i do i just public speak on this thing called learning

every single day for the past three decades.

But I learned also as metacognition to ask myself when I'm going through

struggle, where's the gift in this, right? And I noticed with my sleep, my

sleep is better than 90 minutes now.

I used to have breakfast with Larry King.

you know, every week.

And one time I went three days without sleep and he noticed it at breakfast and

he took me by the hand to his ENT in Beverly Hills.

And next day I'm on the operating table at UCLA with the head of throat and they

took out my uvula, my soft palate, my tonsils, which I didn't want to do, but

my sleep jumped to four hours because it was obstructive apnea where I stopped

breathing 250 times a night.

And, uh, and CPAPs weren't working for me. I tried every single one, dental

devices and all these other things.

And, and then I also had my family tested, my parents, my siblings, they

all have the same thing um and but the other the gift of it is i practice what

i post because all the things i talk about are things that only work for me

when i'm at that extreme either learning disability or extreme no energy because

i'm not sleeping right i mean how do you how's your brain work when you get one

night bad sleep terrible right in fact just one night of sleep deprivation

raises your amyloid beta levels and so that and especially with alzheimer's

when my grandmother that was something i was acutely aware of right because when

you sleep the sewage system kicks in and you all the other, and solidly short to

long-term memory and all these other things. But I was very, it was

dangerous. I was hospitalized many times for just going nights without sleep.

Now, my sleep is much better, but I also have a, let me think where it came from.

And I'm just saying this story because everybody has their own story.

It's like, as a kid, I would pull these all-nighters because I was a learning

disabled, but I would work hard coming from my parents.

So I built a very bad habit early on. And then in my career...

at most i was traveling 240 days out of the year and three continents in a week

so i also jet lag and time zones sleeping in foreign environments and

everything else so we create a perfect storm for really bad sleep so you know

sleep is very important probably one of the most important and so i would say is

but the gift is i practice what i post because i want to be functional

doing anything else if I didn't do the things I was teaching and the other

thing is I'm very protective of my time and my energy because when you only

sleep a couple hours or a few hours or whatever you can't over commit right and

so you know there's opportunity stress as you grow you know in your career and

everything else and I have no FOMO right for me everything is literally like If

it doesn't help me glow, grow, or flow, I say no. And I say it so easily. Like

I'm here, like I'm so glad to be here and I'm fully present, even though I

just got off a plane and everything else, because I've committed to it. And

that allows a certain level of energy and presence there.

But I bring this up because when I was studying sleep, when you first wake up,

there's something called sleep inertia.

And sleep inertia is where you are transitioning from a sleepy state to a

waking state. A certain cognitive functions come online.

Your awareness, your alertness, your attention, your working memory is pretty

much empty, right?

And in that time, there's a process of attentional priming where the mental

inputs you put in that window have a disproportionate effect on the rest of

your day.

And specifically in three areas.

Focus, like what you feed your mind that first in that sleep inertia time, have a

disproportionate influence effect on what you're going to focus on later that

day, how you feel the rest of the day.

and also how you frame conversations, people, situations later in that day.

And now what do most people put in that window, like when they first wake up?

They grab their screen, their device, right? And so what is that priming,

attentional priming, where it's a disproportionate effect on your focus?

So whatever you're seeing, whether it's politics, whatever, and plus the

algorithm is going to give you what you're engaging with the most.

So it's also an echo chamber, which is why I think a lot of people can't think

outside of themselves because I see also some of the most successful individuals,

they have hobbies. They are generalists. This whole idea...

He talks about, Dr. Epstein, about range, right?

Because they can pull from different references that other people don't have,

right? And I think a lot of human intelligence is our ability.

A lot of innovation in art, in science, in literature, in automotive technology

comes from people outside the industry.

Because it takes someone like, as an example, in Elon, looking at the

automotive industry saying, hey, ask a new question.

What if with today's technology, if we were to create an automobile, what would

it look like? How would it be? Instead of just incrementally building on the

last version.

And you ask a new question, you get a new answer, right?

But in that time, most people are feeding their doom scrolling, right? And

that's going to dictate a little bit about their focusing on more.

And certainly, if you pick up your phone, you get one message on social

media or comment or a voicemail or an email from a family friend.

put you in a mood for hours later that day. And also how you frame. If you

start watching content of spirited debate between loved ones or whatever,

you're going to start framing potentially more influence to frame your

interactions as more conflict than usual.

So that's why in that window, the attentional prime you're doing in that

sleep inertia, that's why prayer could have immense benefits when you first

wake up.

Gratitude exercises or five-minute journals, right?

I do an exercise every morning where I wake up.

And when this is just one day out of 366 days is I would I do a mental exercise I

close my eyes I fast forward to the end of the day like I mentally time travel

leaves my imagination

And I imagine I'm coming back to bed and maybe my wife or somebody asked me, how

was your day? And I just imagine myself lighting up and I'm like, today was

amazing. Today was incredible.

Wow, we crushed it today.

And then I ask myself, what had to happen in order for me to feel that way

and to say those things? And I think of three things personally and three things

professionally. And they don't have to be really big things. Like one of the

ones today was, you know, be able to walk.

walk my dog right outside because it's been kind of gloomy and that was like

one thing but those three professional and personal things that becomes my

target that day instead of a 300 to list of to do's right because I'm beginning

with the end in mind Because, again, I feel like we're burnt out not because

we're doing too much. Sometimes we're burnt out. Burnt out is one of the

entries because we're doing too little of the things that make us come alive,

right? Especially things like, you know, self-care.

But so many people, I agree, especially in some communities here where people

are doing all this recovery work.

And the other day, someone was telling me about what they do, the hyperbaric

and all these things, right?

I'm like, okay, I know you.

What are you recovering from?

Like literally, mentally or physically, what do you feel like? Because you

haven't done a whole lot.

other than and so that's just a little little choice point because yeah i think

you have to reach stabilize and then you know reach recover rest you know and

just repeat but you have to be reaching also as well stretch stabilize um so so

what i'm my point of bringing this up is a takeaway for today also is mind before

media like i i would never pick up like who you pick up a phone when you're most

impressionable But there's no studies on suggestibility, but definitely a

disproportionate effect on your focus.

And people could feel that. But how can you protect that? So I have this mantra.

I say mind before media.

Intention before interruptions.

Direction before distraction.

And these are little things. And what do you do? Number one rule for habit design

is you want to create an environment.

Because first you create your habits, then your habits create you. You create

your habits of movement and eating a certain way and thinking a certain way.

prioritizing your sleep and a certain schedule everything and then those

habits create you back so you know and there's only three choices four choices

we can make we either stop something we start something we do less of something

we do more of something i hate to oversimplify this but it's it's that

simple i'm not saying it's easy but how do you change your life with your

choices you stop smoking that will change your life you start some kind of

mindfulness or meditation process you change your life you do less doom

scrolling or binge watching it'll change your life you do more movement

throughout the day it'll change your life and so those little things add up

but for habit design it's first you want to make what's hard like not good for

you difficult like you don't have that junk food in your house it makes it like

impossible to eat it so then that's controlling your environment you know

for me i have my kettlebell right in the doorway of my office so i just i use it

all the time because it's just like right there So you're saying, though,

that the daily things that we have to do every single day that's going to build

that cognitive reserve are hard things. We have to do things that once we pursue

them, we have to have a finish line, that we have to have an end line, like

actually pick the task up and complete the task.

And we have to be joyful. And we also have to socialize.

and communicate with others. Yeah, all of that. And then also control your

environment. Like if you don't have your phone on your nightstand, like that

would be a really good thing to do because then you don't have the impetus.

Like even if our phones right now, and I'm glad like sometimes it's on here, it

would create stress. It would create an urgency. There'd be an impulse. And then

you have to actually, it's like putting bread. You go to a restaurant. I did

this just the other night. I was at a client thing and they brought bread.

And I know some of the people that aren't, like it's easier to say no thank

you for the bread once as opposed to sitting there and thinking like

negotiating with yourself. 50 times, oh, should I have the bread, not have the

bread, right? Think about how much reserve you're spending on that.

Healthcare has become incredibly specialized.

One doctor looks at your hormones. Another looks at your cholesterol.

Someone else reviews your imaging.

But very few people actually connect all the pieces together.

And I think that's the biggest problem in healthcare right now. You just don't

know where to go.

This is what I like about Kinsin. It brings your health information into one

place and connects you with licensed healthcare providers who can help you

understand what your data actually means.

So you guys know that I spend a lot of time talking about personalized.

medicine. That's because I don't believe there's a single longevity protocol that

works for everyone. There's no one size fits all. Your biology is different to

mine. That's why your strategy should be too.

What they do is they help you move from collecting health information to

actually using it. Go and check it out at kinsin.com slash neuro. Take the quiz

and then if you use code neuro at checkout you'll get 20% off your

subscription order.

By the way guys they provide clinician guided wellness programs and metabolic

health programs.

Have you ever thought about artificial general intelligence and what they're

doing at DeepMind, like how it's actually going to figure out protein

structures.

Do you have any thoughts on that? Again, I'm not anti-technology.

Fire is an early form of technology.

It could cook your food or it could burn down your home. It's how the humans are

utilizing this, right?

And same thing with everything.

I feel like it can magnify.

I watch a lot of movies. I get to work in entertainment with a lot of actors

and help them memorize lines, be focused on camera, speed read scripts and all

that.

Of course, there's this fear.

Well, first of all, I don't think humans are going to replace as much as... AI is

not going to be replacing humans as much as it's going to reveal humans, right?

Because it's going to multiply and magnify what we bring to it.

I think the future belongs to those who use...

increase and evolve their H.I. to keep up with with A.I., not to compete with

it because it could do things far better than we can, but to be able to

complement. For me, A.I. is not artificial intelligence. It's augmented

intelligence. It's there for a partner like any technology to magnify some kind

of results.

And there are cognitive our brain, our brains have changed based on technology.

Like when the printing press was was was there it changed the way people remember

things right when gps was invented it changed how people move throughout space

absolutely you know and so even with the internet and everything else like it's

changing and we're going to always evolve um you know at art we do an

annual

event called limitless live and we've been doing it for 20 years it's one

event we do a year and there was the uh the son of gene roddenberry uh rod

roddenberry who started creating star trek and i had to bring him on stage for

fireside chat and that was a that that was a very beautiful future for me where

there was no scarcity and no disease because technology took care of all

that. You know, am I concerned a little bit about like, am I concerned about

people losing their jobs and careers like radiologists?

Like with technology now, what it could do more accurately than the human

perception with almost like... I would imagine even 100% accuracy like that

that's tough because there's also I get to work with a lot of vets with a lot of

athletes that go into like the I was at the Super Bowl and I'm part of the

the the the nfl alumni like when when people are transitioning like imagine

the identity even at you know what people are losing when they spend their

life in the military and then they leave and they come back and you know as as

into civilian life right and not not only the identity but the community you

know think about sports as as you know you train this and this is your identity

you know especially if you're part of a team and then all of a sudden you go

through

And I help them with skill acquisition and, you know, all the other things that

people do for their new chapter.

But I'm concerned also with the loss of purpose that people have with with AI

when it could do so much. I'll always believe I'm optimistic by nature.

Otherwise, I feel like as an entrepreneur, then I would.

Yeah, it'd be tough. But I mean, nobody knows these answers. Like the thing is,

like it was always before it's like Wayne Gretzky's quote. It's like, oh,

you want to go where the puck is going.

with AI and like we don't, the puck is like teleporting everywhere.

So if there was one thing that you could leave the audience with, like one

message for maintaining mental fitness in the age of AI, what would

that be?

So I think it's important to take care of, we talk about like processes and

like the mind and the brain for me, I'm wearing this on my shirt metaphorically

and all metaphors aren't accurate, but for me.

Just because I use the words, some people use the words interchangeably,

right? And for me, the brain is kind of like the riverbed.

It's the heart thing that's there.

And I feel like the river is like the mind. And it's interesting because the

riverbed, the brain will determine like where the mind is, where it's flowing,

right? A lot of it, because that's the physical thing. But also the flow of the

river will change.

the riverbed also, you know, over time. And that's where our thoughts and the

things that we're doing habitually with neuroplasticity and everything.

So I would say my message for everybody would be this. Like when you wake up,

it's like we're getting on an airplane and we're heading hopefully to a city by

our choice, like a destination, right?

And my thing is when you're in that plane and you're the passenger, you're

subject to a lot of turbulence. And that's all the things that...

People are calling on you, client stuff, family stuff, economic stuff, internal

stuff, whatever.

And that turbulence can make your journey not so pleasant.

And even if it knocks you off 1% off course over the course of a day or the

length of that flight, you can end up in a different city, in a different

country. And so my message for everyone is a reminder.

I want to take them by the hand and take them from the passenger seat into the

cockpit, put them in the pilot seat.

And I would love, you know, with this book to be their co-pilot.

But it's like they are the pilot of their brain.

you know not the passenger and i feel like like even the color if you're

watching this on video is purple and this is interesting because it's not a

branding thing it's a it's a becoming thing like yes it stands out on shelves

because how many most people don't have any purple books on their shelf so it's

you know that's important for memory it's very important to be distinct so it

stands out but the psychology behind purple if you and i don't buy into a lot

of college psychology but purple was one of the rarest colors this is true like

over thousands of years because it was the most rare because of the hardest to

create like in mediterranean they would have to like extract from these sea

snails like their shell like to make the color purple that's why i was using

royalty and you know and that but it's associated with sovereignty and wisdom

and so that's what i want to remind people of in this conversation that Yes,

genetics plays a part. Your biology plays a part. But our lifestyle far

outweighs the influence.

And we know that, right? And so reminding people people have agency,

that the purple represents sovereignty and represents some wisdom, which only

can be learned through personal experience.

And so whether it's this book or something else, be very conscious and

stand guard to your mind.

Because if people truly understood how powerful their mind is, they wouldn't

say or think something they didn't want to be true.

not to say you have one negative thought it ruins your life from like somebody

tells you something or whatever any more than eating one donut will ruin your

life but if you get that donut 30 times a day every single day there will be a

consequence same thing with that it's really hard to create a positive life

with a negative mind and so what i would say is every day we have a chance

because we have a choice you know and do things with intention you know as

opposed to being manipulated by other people about how you know what we think

about how we feel about ourselves and what we do That was great.

Can I tell people where to get it? Please do. Tell us.

When is this available?

So it's LimitlessDaily.com.

The book comes out September 8th.

And there's a free companion that comes along with it where you'll get a

question for 366 days. We begin our journey together.

Also, we're doing an event called Limitless Live.

And that is September 11th and 12th. And I would love to add you to the faculty.

We have Stephen Kotler there.

We have Dave Asprey. We have the Human Garage.

We have Goldie Hawn. It is a stellar lineup.

And, yeah, people can see that at Limitless Live. And that's where we'll

start the expedition together. I cannot wait. thank you so much for being part

of the new experience podcast you're the best thank you