Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,28
one managed to communicate to her that she needed to bring a change of clothing.
By the time she was in her early twenties, Alexis had a hard time reading a book from front to back. She battled with her internal voices whenever she attempted to learn. One overarching voice constantly criticized and doubted her abilities, while another small voice questioned that critic. Something inside her couldn’t fully accept the notion that she was “dumb.” Her parents worked hard to give her a second chance, and she couldn’t let them down. While there were moments where she felt she wasn’t good enough to do anything special in her life, there were also moments where she was sure there had to be more to life than merely accepting her circumstances.
If Alexis allowed those external voices to shape her reality, then it would’ve stopped her in her tracks. She wouldn’t have searched for solutions to her problems. Instead, she looked for answers by observing and learning from others. She started wondering what they were doing differently to find success and happiness. She wanted to know if it was sheer luck and genius, or if there was a method behind it. In her quest to learn how to be successful, she ended up in one of my early classes. She wasn’t sure what she was getting into, but knew she wanted something different for herself—she needed to feel a sense of hope.
On day one, we covered memory. It was eight hours of intense training, but at the end of the session, Alexis felt refreshed and even excited about what she was learning. “How else can I use my brain?” she wondered. For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel slow and she felt excited about learning.
Day two was all about speed reading. She wasn’t initially excited about this because of her previous challenges. But when Alexis learned the smart reading habits and went through the speed-reading exercises, a lightbulb turned on. She suddenly saw the potential—and even the fun—of reading. She realized she was not too slow or stupid to understand; she was just never shown how to learn and use the super-computer between her ears. As she experienced the power of learning, the years of negative self-talk and limiting beliefs took a backseat in her mind.
After that class, Alexis read a complete book for the first time and was blown away by how much she understood, how much she remembered, and how much she liked the experience.
It was a huge turning point in her life. She went from a limited mindset, believing that “things are the way they are,” to knowing that she could change and shape her mind to reach her goals. For the first time in her life, she began to believe in herself and imagine what might be possible.
Today, Alexis doesn’t shy away from learning something new. She doesn’t feel inadequate if she doesn’t know something. She goes out to find answers and applies them. Out of her passion for learning, she also started Kwik Learning Online with me to share the transformation she experienced with others in every country in the world.
In their book Mequilibrium, authors Jan Bruce, Dr. Andrew Shatté, and Dr. Adam Perlman call these kinds of beliefs “iceberg beliefs” because of how many of them lie beneath the surface of our subconscious. “Iceberg beliefs are deeply rooted and powerful, and they fuel our emotions,” they say in the book. “The more entrenched an iceberg is, the more havoc it wreaks on your life. . . creating your schedule chaos, getting in the way of successfully sticking to a diet, or holding you back from seizing opportunities.”
And, perhaps most significantly, they say, “If we get a handle on our icebergs, we gain an enormous amount of control over our feelings and our lives. Melt an iceberg and all the downstream events it causes get washed away as well.”2
Dr. Jennice Vilhauer, director of Emory University’s Adult Outpatient Psychotherapy Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science in the School of Medicine, implores us to come face-to-face with our inner critic, “the voice in your head that judges you, doubts you, belittles you, and constantly tells you that you are not good enough. It says negative hurtful things to you—things that you would never even dream of saying to anyone else. I am such an idiot; I am a phony; I never do anything right; I will never succeed.”
She adds: “The inner critic isn’t harmless. It