BITESIZE | The Simple Daily Habits That Can Boost Your Brain Health & Improve Your Focus with Brain Coach Jim Kwik #541

Today’s guest believes that small lifestyle changes can lead to big improvements in brain function. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 469 of the podcast with globally renowned brain coach Jim Kwik. In this clip, he explains a simple framework for making change in our lives, and shares his top habits to optimise brain health and get the best out of our minds. Jim is such a wonderful and caring human being and a quite brilliant communicator, who has lots of practical knowledge that he is super passionate about sharing. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/469 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's Bite Size episode is sponsored by AG1, a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over seven years. Now, this is the time of year when our immune systems are under the most pressure. It's natural to look for extra ways to support our immune defences. But most people don't want to juggle multiple pills. They want something simple, effective and easy to stick with. AG1 is a daily health drink that provides key immunity-supporting nutrients, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, all of which contribute to the normal function of the immune system.

• 0:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  These nutrients are included in highly bioavailable forms, meaning they are much easier for the body to absorb and use. And the best thing, of course, is that all this goodness comes in one convenient, tasty daily serving. For a limited time only, get a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts for first-time subscribers.

• 1:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  See all details at drinkag1.com/livemore. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 469 of the podcast with globally renowned brain coach Jim Quick. Jim believes that small lifestyle changes can lead to big improvements in brain function. In this clip, he explains a simple framework for making change in our lives and shares his top habits to optimise brain health and get the best out of our minds.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  If you wanted to create a new result in your life, which most of us do, you have to make a new choice, right? There are only four fundamental choices to make a change. You either could stop something, you could start something, you could do less of something, or you could do more of something. That's literally the only things you could do. Because if you did, the fifth thing is not do anything. That's insanity, right? Doing the same thing expecting a different result. So you want to create a new result. Let's say it's wellness. You could either stop something, start something, do less of something, do more of something. You could stop smoking, right? You could start meditating. You could do less binge-watching television sitcoms.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Or you could do more movement throughout the day, right? And so I'm not saying this is easy, but I'm saying it is pretty straightforward and simple. And so when I'm looking at how to make my life better, I could ask myself these kind of questions like, is this good for my brain or is this bad for my brain? Something simple. And then I could ask, what can I stop? What can I start? What can I do less of? What can I do more of? And those little things add up to big things over time because that consistency compounds.

• 3:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And so I think that's the importance of mastering your mind because it gives you awareness and it reminds you of you have agency.

• 3:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  At the start of this conversation, we both were sharing how life is short, time is limited. Let's not waste our days away. Let's look after our brains. Let's be intentional and live lives to our fullest potential as much as we can, right? You mentioned some sort of habits there, right? Which are really interesting to me. And I wanted to know, what do you think are some of the common habits that people all over the world now are engaging in each day? That have been detrimental to their brain health.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  University studies suggest about forty percent of our day is spent habitual.

• 4:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Like mindless, we're just going through a routine, but we're not thoughtful about it. Cause we're on autopilot, right? And so the idea is you create your habits and your habits create you. And also habits could also be getting giving you some a negative result. There are certain things that we're doing that we could stop or do less of. Right?

• 4:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  The choices. And then you could always do the opposite, you know? Start something new or do more of something that's positive. What you eat matters, especially if you're gray matter. So I would say on the opposite side of all the brain foods that we talk about, like avocados and blueberries and so on. I would say, you know, the processed food, refined foods, the, you know, a lot of, a lot of chemicals in foods, the high sugar, you know, the glucose spikes. That's something that can be detrimental to our brain. Right? Second thing, um, negative self-talk. When we say, why me? Why is this, why does this always happen to me? Why am I not enough? I'm, I'm not that smart, whatever it happens to be. And I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. Right?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  And so the idea here is negative self-talk could be detrimental. Third thing, being sedentary. Right? We live behind screens. I don't know about most people, but I do. And we're not moving. And the number one reason, I want to remind everyone, the number one reason we have a brain, its number one function is to control our movement. And as your body moves, your brain grooves. And so I would say something that's negative, a negative habit is not moving.

• 5:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  You know, they say sitting is the new smoking. But when we exercise, we create, you know, B D N F, brain derived neurotropic factors, which is like fertilizer for your brain, for neuroplasticity. And when we exercise, create dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, you know, these, these important.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Neurotransmitters and substances that are really good for cognitive health and cognitive performance. When we move, we create blood flow, you know, so it's more oxygen to your brain. I mean, there's so many benefits. It reduces stress and so on. I would also say being around negative people, it's not so much good for your brain. I don't know if you ever noticed, like, some people, it seems like batteries are included, but there are few people that batteries just were not included. And they like, take all your energy and your drive and your motivation and your creativity. So I would say who we spend time with is who we become. And being around people that are not who you want to be like,

• 6:50Speaker 01

  or aspects of them that they don't inspire you. I mean, we all need people to cheerlead for us, to be kind to us, to encourage us. And if you haven't found that person, you know, be that person. Be that person for somebody else. Be that person, especially for yourself. So a negative peer group. And again, those people could be your family. It could be your friends, people closest to you. And they could be sincere, but they could be sincerely wrong, too. You know, they could have good intentions. Maybe they're like, oh, I always listen to those podcasts and reading all those books or whatever. And maybe they don't want, deep down, there's a secondary gain. They don't want you to outgrow them because they don't want to be separate from you. So it can be good intentions, or maybe they don't want you to get your hopes up, or, you know, and they're trying

• 7:35Speaker 01

  to protect you. With our friends and family, sometimes the people that we care about most are the ones that hold us back because we give them permission and we give up our sovereignty to their expectations and opinions. And I want to still remind everyone, you could love your family, but they don't have to be your peers. Like, when I say have a positive peer group, I'm saying self-selecting individuals that their opinion affects how you feel, you know, and affects your standards, right? Meaning, I have this rule that just don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from. Don't take criticism because like a lot of us are fearful of other people's opinions and expectations.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  But if you want to do anything in your life, you know, there's this judgment that comes around it and people have their, their opinions, especially on social media. And we could decide and hold that internal reality that, you know, we will work on having the people around us that we can identify with that, you know, I can, that they can relate to, that inspire them. And I certainly have, you know, people like that also as well.

• 8:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. You, you mentioned some of the habits that people are engaging with that are maybe sabotaging their day to day lives in many ways that are stealing their life away without them realizing. If we flip that, what are three of your favorite pro-brain habits that people could do?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  What, how would you answer that?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Let me, let me give you a few more of the negative habits and then, and then because that'll inform the, the positive ones. So we talked about a bad brain diet, you know, is probably not good for your brain. Definitely negative thinking is a habit, habits of thought, not moving is a habit, being sedentary. So obviously the opposite of all these make a difference. A positive peer group is good, but a negative peer group could affect your words, your actions, your thoughts, your character, your habits. A dirty environment, I mean, we don't think about our environment as much, but our external reality affects our internal reality. So you notice like you clean your desk or you put everything in the right folder on your computer, you have clarity of thought.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  But a messy environment reflects, you have to use so much energy to hold like where everything is.

• 9:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And I feel like that wouldn't be a good use of our brain. So a negative habit would be, you know, sustaining a dirty environment. Not learning something is not good for your brain. You know, if you're not learning, you're not growing, you're not challenging. And so like our brains are like, it's an organ, but it acts like a muscle, it's use it or lose it. And so I would say not learning every day could, you know, could affect your brain. And that's a habit. And then being stressed all the time could affect our brain. Emotional stress, financial stress, whatever the stressors are, chronic stress has been showing to shrink the human brain. And so not having coping mechanisms for me.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Habits that have really helped me of late, I would say, spending more time in nature, because I'm not on my screen, nature is very healing, clean air, better lighting. I feel grounded, it reduces my stress. I also could do that with my family. I would put one more negative habit on there, besides the things we've talked about in the last episode, like touching your phone at night or in the first thing in the morning, all those things, anything that would affect your sleep. And that could be a habit of drinking caffeine later in the afternoon. It could be, you know, being on screens. It could be ruminating, which is a habit of like, all the things you need to do, or

• 11:24Speaker 01

  all the things that worry you. And I'm not saying, yeah, it's easy to mitigate these things, but the self-awareness is a starting point for all change again. So, good habits for me, being out in nature, going to bed at the same time is so very important to me. I mean, it took me a long time to get to the point where I'm just okay with going to bed at like, nine, nine thirty.

• 11:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Welcome to my world, man. I love it.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  So, going to bed at the same time each night, even on weekends, and no one's perfect about it, but it's made a big difference in my life. And then the last thing I would say, the habit of looking for joy. I mean, this thing I talk about called the dominant question, and we mentioned it very, very briefly in our first conversation. But when I was with Will Smith, I trained a lot of actors how to speed read scripts, memorize their lines, be focused on set. And this dominant question and idea is like, we have 60,000 thoughts on average a day, a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions, and there's certain questions we ask all the time, that we don't consciously and unconsciously,

• 12:34Speaker 01

  and those questions determine our reality. And his dominant question we found out is, how do I make this moment magical?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And he gets answers, right? And then I was like, okay, my dominant question is, how do we make it better? So how do we make this question better? And he was like, okay, instead of how do I make this moment magical? How about how do I make this moment even more magical? With the presupposition being this moment's already magical. We're shooting in Toronto, a superhero film. And it was like two o'clock at night. It was a night shoot and it's not very glamorous. It's cold, it's in February in Canada. And but his family and I are in a tent, shivering a little bit, watching the screens. And during the break, he's making us hot chocolate, even though there's a crew that would do that.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  And he starts telling us stories and cracking jokes. That's a result of that dominant question. How do I make this moment even more magical? Right? The idea here is that one of my habits is just trying to find more joy, more magic. And I think what we what we look for, we were more likely to find. It's like that, what's that? That red car experiment. It's like, you know, you see if I asked everybody like in the past 24 hours, how many red cars they saw on the way to home or work? They're like, I don't know how many, but you probably saw them, yes. But if you're offered somebody, you know, a hundred dollars for every single red car they saw, they'd be very clear in seeing the red cars.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  And I feel like there's a lot of things we could be grateful for at any given time, but we're not asking those questions.

• 14:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think that's such a key point when we think about joy or gratitude, or how do you make this moment magical?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Even asking that question is, what can I be grateful for? You know, in this moment, it just sensitized you to see more red cars. That's always there, but we weren't paying attention. Your brain primarily is a deletion device, is trying to keep information out. If we let everything in. There's a billion stimuli that would overload us, right? But when you ask questions, we activate that reticular activating system, which is like a spotlight, you know? And so you start seeing what you're asking for. And I think that's a great habit to be in. In a gratitude habit is so good for your brain because it gets you out of fear and gets you out of stress. Because again, chronic stress shrinks your brain.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Chronic fear, you know, will make you more susceptible. The colds, the flus, the virus will compromise your immune system. But I think gratitude is an incredible antidote.

• 15:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people listen to this show because they want to live a healthier and happier life.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  And often they're thinking about habits that they can implement into their life. I think you have something where you say, for any habit you want to bring into your life, you've got to ask yourself three questions.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think knowledge is not power. It's a potential to be power. It becomes power when we apply it. I think how we take knowledge and turn it into action. The three questions I ask, I'm asking, how can I use this?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Then I ask myself, why must I use this? So it goes from my head to my heart. Then the third question is when? When will I use it? Again, one of the most important productivity performance tools you have is your calendar. I think for every hour people spend listening to this conversation or reading a book or whatever, a general rule is to spend an hour, an equal hour, putting it into action, right? You spend an hour listening to a podcast, at least spend another hour or some time putting it into play.

• 16:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I think those questions are brilliant because yes, it applies to learning. It applies to a habit that they hear, right? They think, oh, that sounds interesting. Okay, how can I use this habit? Okay, that's getting them to think a little bit. Why must I use it?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's any, because without that why, without reasons, you won't get the results.

• 16:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  And then it's when will? When will I?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so then it goes from your head to your heart to your hands. Meaning, how can I use this? You're coming up with all ideas in your head. Why must I use this, right? The heart and then the hands, when? You know, when am I going to act on this? And so I feel like when you have those three things in play, there's less friction.

• 16:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, that's brilliant.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  To learn something, to do anything at all, or even to take some kind of action that you need to take, that's, you know, might be even uncomfortable. There's that mental exercise, this thought experiment, and I would, I would challenge everyone to do this with us. It's if you woke up and there was eighty six, I'm going to use dollars, eighty six thousand four hundred dollars in your account, but you knew at midnight it was going to disappear and then it replenishes the next day. How would you invest that, that money? And you would invest in things that really mattered, right? That could be there for you. That's our time because there are eighty six thousand four hundred seconds in a day. And it's the same thing.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Whatever we don't invest into the future, we, we just lose. And regardless, as you're listening to this, of your age or stage in life, simple things make a big difference.

• 17:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hope you enjoyed that bite sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest? If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles of books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend.

• 18:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can sign up for it free of charge at drchattity.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.