How many of you have been the opposite, you read something, you get to the end
of the page, and then you forgot what you just read?
Look around.
And you go back and you reread it and you still don't know what you
just read, right?
And that's a big problem, right?
Because you're wasting your most valuable asset which is your time and the reason
why all the speakers here give 100% is because we know your time is valuable.
Like, I want to make this session so valuable, when you leave you are like,
"I would have came and paid just for this one talk."
You know what I mean?
Because I know what it's like when I first learned these skills,
I traveled around the world, I bought every audio program,
audio cassette...I'm dating myself, but it's like I bought all these programs
because that's the thing that's going to help me be able to grow the most.
And so on the right side, the three questions I obsess
about to get the most out of my reading or listening to a podcast or anything else,
I asked myself these three questions.
I ask myself, "How can I use this?"
Now, it's so basic but I like to make...the things that are going to give
you the highest return, I want to make them as simple as possible
so you do it.
"How can I use this?"
And this is your creativity.
You're listening to me as I speak here and all the other speakers and just ask,
"How can I use this?"
Because you have a dominant question you ask all the time,
it's been imprinted on you since you were a child, right?
And so for me growing up as the boy with a broken brain, I would be very introverted,
very shy, and I would just...my superpower back then was being invisible, right?
Because I didn't want to be seen or heard because I didn't feel like I was enough
and that's just what my reality was.
But my imagination would kick in all the time because I would watch people and
observe them and ask, "Why is that person so smart?
Why do I have to work three times harder to do worse than this person, right?"
And the question I would ask all the time was, "How can I make this better?"
Because I was obsessed, and the key to reading comprehension is
asking more questions.
If you read a page in a book, get to the end, and not get anything
out of it, it's because you're not asking questions, because questions
are the answer.
You can write that on the left side.
Questions are the answer because ask and you shall receive.
And so that's all the thinking is, when you really break down functionally
what thought and thinking is, when you're in a corner thinking
to yourself, you're asking questions and then you're answering them.
And you probably are like, "Is that true?"
Notice you had to ask a question to be able to think about that, right?
And so, on the right side, I'm thinking about questions like,
"How can I use this?"
and this is like, ""Oh, there's the one way I could use it,
another way and another way."
The second question that I obsess about...and I would capture on the
right side, to be able to when you're taking notes throughout today and the rest
of your life, on the right side I would say, "Why must I use this?"
Because here's the thing, the biggest lie in the personal
development industry is that knowledge is power.
It is, it's just you feel like you got points because you think signed up for a
seminar or a webinar, you bought a book and it sits on your
shelf and it becomes shelf-help instead of self-help because it just
sits there, right?
But it doesn't become...the truth is what people don't tell you is all the podcasts,
coaching, conferences, online programs, none of it works unless you work, right?
Is that fair to say?
Like, you can't read a book on doing, like, push-ups and get benefit from that,
it just doesn't work, right?
So, you have to do the work.
So I'm asking myself, "How can I use this?"
and I come up with all these ideas, that's the creativity part.
And then I'm asking, "Why must I use this?"
Because if it's not a must, you're not going to do it because you have
plenty of other things to do, is that fair?
Because there's the success formula, you capture on the left side of your page,
head, heart, hands.
You could think about things in your mind, set goals in your head and affirmations,
KPIs, your objectives, but if you're not acting with your hands,
and you're procrastinating.
Raise your hand if you ever procrastinated before.
Right, all of us.
If there's a gap between your head and your hands, check in with the second H,
which is your heart, right?
The emotion, we do things emotionally, we are emotional creatures.
We're not logical; we're biological.
Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, we're this chemical soup and so we want
to be able to activate that.
So, head, heart, hands, another way of putting it are the I's.
Information, that's good, great, but sometimes you can listen to a podcast
that has lot of information but there's no inspiration to use it.
Fair?
But sometimes you can listen to a speaker or learn something and it's inspiring,
but you don't know what to do, right?
Is that fair?
So you have information, you have inspiration,
and then you have implementation where you're doing it.
And I feel like when you get all three I's together, you have the most powerful I
which is integration.
That's my goal for all of you is that when you read something, you listen
to something, you know, you learn something,
it becomes part of who you are.
It's integrated here, here and, here and then you have an alignment and
how it performs is it looks like magic to people.
You know when somebody is aligned and they're in their element,
it looks like it's effortless?
You know, these flow states, it's powerful.
There's three parts to it that I focus on.
You know, how many of you have ever been in the zone?
And that's how it is when I'm reading.
Like, people think that just because our programs called Kwik Brain and Kwik
Learning and Kwik Reading, it's frantic fast.
It's not at all, it is a piece to it.
It's like somebody who's fit and has strategies, if they have to climb
a mountain, it looks like it's effortless because they've just done the work and
they have strategy and they have tools to be able to do so and somebody who maybe
doesn't have those resources, it's more effort, is that fair?
So actually learning how to do these things, it's easier, like,
when I read a book...I still read a book a day, it's just part of my practice,
it's part of my mental hygiene and I feel like it's the number one exercise because
reading is to your mind like exercise is to your body.
And some of you are already doing this, I'm preaching to you so I'm going to show
you how to do it better.
But those of you who aren't, on the other spectrum,
reading at all...the average person reads, like, two books a year,
now if you're reading, like, more than that, that means somebody is
reading a lot less, right, on the other side but it's the best
exercise for your brain.
People ask me all the time, "How do I keep my brain young and how do I
keep it energetic as I grow older?"
Reading, reading.
But the problem is a lot of people don't indulge in it because they're not good
at it and I wouldn't be playing a lot of golf if I was horrible at it all the time
but in psychology, they have something called the confidence-competence loop.
That the more competent you get at something, the more confident you get
at it and then the confidence will make you do it more and then you get more
competent and then it cycles through in the positive momentum, right?
And you have examples of that in your own life.
So what I'm asking about here, the second part, the inspiration is,
"Why must I use this?"
And you know what question I asked a lot of is like, "Who's counting on me
to win today?"
You know what I mean?
Because some of you...and I bring this up because some of you really will do more
for other people than you will for yourself.
So knowing that about yourself, self-awareness is a superpower,
then tap into that.
You don't have to change it, tap into it, "Who's counting on me to, like,
be at my best?"
And then you're more likely to do it.
And the reason I know this is because when I was driven so much,
it was really my family who I want to make proud.
Like, we all have our reasons, right?
And one of my favorite books, I probably give you 12 of them, you know,
in this conversation, "Start With Why," it's a must read book
by Simon Sinek.
And you want to start with your why because reasons reap results,
reasons reap results.
And even remembering people's names, if you don't have a reason to remember
their name, you don't.
Like, how many of you have trouble remembering people's names,
raise your hand.
See, this is the thing, you don't remember everyone's name but you
sure as heck don't forget everyone's name either, right?
So, there's always...genius leaves clues...you can write that down,
genius leaves clues, there's always a method behind the magic,
and I bet you the names you remember are people that you have some
kind of intention.
You're attracted to that person, they could be good
for your business, right?
There's some kind of motivation that's there.
So, find your motivation in your reading because if you're not motivated,
you're not going to read very well.
Is that fair?