You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson. For more, visit themodelhealthshow.com.

Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert Shawn Stevenson and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. 

This is a powerhouse episode. We've had a lot of incredible guests, a lot of smart people on the show and this is one of the things that we really strive for, is to really tap into our intelligence. 

There are these statements out there that we only use maybe 10 percent of our brain's capacity, our brain's capabilities. Now, that's not completely true, we do use our whole brain, we just tend to not use it very well. 

This compilation today is going to focus on the greatest tips and insights and strategies to literally get us smarter— how can we tap into our smarts, how can we tap into our intelligence.

And some of these insights have been absolutely game-changing in my life and game-changing for a lot of the folks that have been listening. 

Now sometimes, some of these shows are going back even a couple of years and you might have missed some of these. And so I wanted to put together some of the very best insights that we can, to really help us to get smarter. 

Before we do that, when we're talking about getting smarter, we've got to talk about brain food, we've got to talk about our nutrition, we've got to talk about total human optimization, because today, more than ever, we've got a lot of stuff coming at us and we've got a lot of tabs open on the screens of our minds, the computer screens of our minds.

And to be able to focus and get a lot of stuff done, we've got to really maximize our nutrition. And one of the things that have been seen recently is that only certain types of fats can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and feed your brain cells. 

And one of those types of fat is now being studied and I just came across a study recently and it blew my mind, all right. And this was one of the most recent things was published by the Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, found that MCTs, medium chain triglycerides can provide energy to weakened brain cells, brain cells that have been damaged or that are getting into their elderly stage. 

And what they found was that these MCTs can provide energy to weakened brain cells to help them to live longer, and now this is actually being looked at as part of a comprehensive treatment for Alzheimer's. 

Wow, that's absolutely, that's crazy, that's crazy, so understanding we only had two lanes of fats when I was in my university classes, we had like saturated fat, trans fats were thrown in there even though it's not the same thing, and then we had the Omega fats, the "good fats". 

And now we know that there are these whole other categories, medium chain triglycerides, you've got the short chain, long chain, medium chain, extra medium triglycerides and these literally can fuel and protect your brain cells. 

So super powerful stuff, but also MCTs have been noted to help with supporting the health of your microbiome, by kind of attacking, going after selectively, pathogenic bacteria. Also, MCTs are able to cross, just like they're able to cross the blood-brain barrier, they're able to cross the membrane of our cells.

Our cells all have these protective membranes, and we have to have the right kind of currency when we eat food to break it down that they can actually cross over and feed ourselves. MCTs can actually cross over that membrane without all of the usual processing that food has to go through. 

In a sense, it's instant cell food. And I could just go on and on, I love MCTs and it's something I've been utilizing for at least about five years on a regular basis, but the last few years, I'm obsessed, I admit it and I'm confident about it. 

I'm obsessed with the emulsified MCT oils from Onnit. I literally have it every day. I travel with it, I bring this bottle with me, pack it up in my luggage. I put maybe a little bubble wrap around it, just to be safe. 

And I love it because number one, it tastes amazing, first of all. MCT oil itself is a little bit, it's neutral, it's just really nothing to it, it's just a kind of a clear liquid, but Onnit decided they were going to emulsify the oil to make it thicker and it gives it like a creamy consistency, and so you don't have to blend it. 

Because prior to this I would put stuff in the blender in the morning, whether it's tea or coffee and blend the MCT oil. I take that step out, I can literally just swish around a fork really quickly or whatever it is and you can get this to blend up really nicely but I do have a frother, I don't know if you guys have ever tried a frother, a coffee frother? It's fancy. 

The first time I did, I was like, "Okay, this is fresh, I'm Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, okay, basically". 

But anyways, so I use my little frother, I throw some MCT oil in there. I love the almond milk latte, it's my favorite flavor, my wife loves the vanilla, we've got strawberries as well. Onnit also carries coconut if you're a big coconut fan. 

And it's just the best, they do this in the very best way. Earth-grown nutrients, they care about the product, they care about the people and I just love these guys. 

So pop over there, check them out, it's onnit.com/model, you get 10 percent off, O-N-N-I-T .com/model, 10 percent off everything they carry including the emulsified MCT oils. 

On that note, let's go ahead and jump into the Apple podcast review of the week. 

iTunes review: Another 5-star review titled, "Wait, let me grab a pen," by Anne Marie Uf 

"I bought a notebook specifically to take notes on this podcast. I start every morning with a cup of coffee and an episode of The Model Health Show and it sets a positive tone for my day. 

The experts that Shawn brings on his show are the best in their field and he keeps it fun and interesting with his quirky personality. I couldn't thank Shawn enough for a positive impact he's had on my life. This podcast makes health and wellness make sense. Thank you, Shawn. 

Shawn Stevenson: Awesome, I love this so much. I don't know if anybody's ever said "quirky" about me, I'll take it though. I thank you so much for that and a notebook specifically for the show, you are on another level.

All right, you are on the boss level stuff. It's super powerful, thank you for sharing that over on Apple podcasts. 

And listen, if you've yet to leave a review, pop over to Apple podcasts, leave a review for this show. Please, I appreciate it so much, let everybody know what you think of the show or whatever platform you're listening to this, or if you're in the studio with me right now, leave a comment below the video, let me know what you think of the episode today, alright. Because we're going to pour it on. 

As a matter of fact, when they mentioned about having a pen ready— get your pen ready, because we're about to literally detail, give you step by step action steps, insights tools, for you to become smarter. Get smarter, tap into more of your brain's capacity right now in this episode. 

So in this compilation, we've got, we can't do this without four time Model Health— what do we call them, valedictorian of the show, but he's definitely alumni of this show and it's Jim Kwik. He is a really good friend of mine and he's been a partner and parcel responsible for a lot of the things that I'm doing today. And sometimes in an indirect way but he's just such a great person and he's one of the smartest people that I've ever met by far. 

I've seen him do some incredible feats, I'm talking like one of the first times I saw him speak, we were in a room with 100 people. It was like "invite only" type of event and he had everybody in the room to pass the mic around and share a two-digit number. And he's just standing there on the stage and it passed the mic around and somebody would say 50, and then a person would say 17, the next person would say 07, the next person says 69, and the next person says 73, and the list goes on and on, and so it's just this huge number and he literally remembered the entire number, so it was like a 200-digit number, if I'm even doing the math right, forward and he can recite it backward, literally just standing there and just taking that data in.

And then he would say, "Everybody has the capacity to do this." And as soon as he said that I'm like, "Nah, nah I can't, Jim, nah, I can't." 

But the truth is, many of the techniques and strategies that he's shared are very tangible, very applicable for so many of us to just kind of grab onto and get some instant results from. 

But it's just like anything, it's training, and training our brains to do the incredible things they're capable of because with Jim's story he actually had some brain damage when he was a kid and he had struggles learning. And so he became passionate about tapping into and discovering how to help us to learn better.

And so in this clip, he's going to be sharing how you can improve your memory recall from what you're reading and how to significantly improve your focus. 

So let's jump into this conversation with the one and only, memory and learning expert Jim Kwik. Check it out. 

Jim Kwik: So one of the things I think that keeps people from learning faster is they're so passive about it, it's this idea between passive and active recall. I actually recommend people, "Don't reread chapters of their nonfiction book," a lot of people will read something and reread it again thinking they're going to get more out of it the second time right afterward. 

And certainly, it is, but it's marginal returns because you can easily— here is the thing, what people found out by rereading things is to study, is that they could delude themselves thinking that you really know the information when you're reading it instead of really, instead of the better thing to do is to test yourself. 

Because it's like, for example, you read the chapter and then instead of rereading that same chapter, close the book and recall and recite all you can remember.

Because there is a difference between recognition and recollection, meaning recognition requires a trigger for you to remember something that you might not get on the test, it's like when somebody recognizes a face they don't necessarily remember the face, but what they're doing is they're recognizing it because it's right in front of them and they realize that they've seen it before. 

One of the reasons why names are so difficult sometimes is because you don't get that same prompt, you get a prompt with the person's face but you don't get that prompt or that trigger for the person's name. 

And so studying actively with focus on recollection as opposed to the recognizing something, one of the things to best do that is to quiz yourself, read something and then ask yourself these questions. Because often, questions are the answer. 

And I think a lot of people, Shawn, when they're reading and people are like, "Jim, how do you—" we did a whole podcast episode on speed reading, people are like, "How do you read a book a week," or, "How do you read a book a day." And one of the ways you can do it is— and, "How do you get to really understand and retain it?" 

And I'll tell you that if you want greater speed, I always tell people to use their finger while they read, the visual pacer will help boost your reading speed 25, 30 percent. 

But if you want greater comprehension, you have to train yourself to ask better questions, ask more questions and ask better questions. 

Because as you're reading, they act like a magnet, it's like, "Oh there's an answer, there's an answer, there's an answer." 

And I think part of being more active in recollection is actually asking yourself, "What do I want to learn out of this?" "How does this compare to what I already know, how am I going to teach this to somebody else?" 

Because that's all thinking is, it's just this process of asking new questions and answering them also as well. 

And so I am a big believer is that just don't fool yourself into thinking that you know something because you could recognize it, see if you could really retain it and recollect it by quizzing yourself as you're learning something brand new.

The other thing I want to mention also is, you mentioned the top is just stop cramming and the reason why cramming is a big mistake is because they've done studies where they found that the average person loses their focus after 25 or 30 minutes.

It's like a kind of like a TV show and that's our attention span for a lot of things. And so there's this time management technique called the "Pomodoro Technique" which basically means you're setting your alarm every 25, 30 maybe 45 minutes and when it's done, you take a break, not a 25 or 30 minute break, but you're taking a 2, 3, 4, 5 minute break to do things that are good for your brain.

So what are those things? Movement is very good, most people are way too sedentary, they're sitting all day, 8 hours a day and that's bad for you. Obviously, movement is key, because as your body moves, your brain grooves. 

The other thing I would suggest is deep breathing, whether it's box breathing, Alpha breathing, Wim Hof, whatever people subscribe to and so you get the oxygen. 

And also hydrate, obviously and it's again, very, very fundamentals but so many people dabble in these things when really should really master this process. Because your power comes from the fundamentals. 

Shawn Stevenson: All right. Next up on our Get Smarter compilation is a conversation I had with bestselling author Cal Newport. And Cal is the author of one of my all-time favorite books called "Deep Work". 

And Cal is blowing up right now, he's like on the Breakfast Club, he's like on all these fancy platforms and all over social media, but he would never know because he's not on social media. 

He's studied and saw the effects that this could have on our productivity, specifically which is his passion, what he's concerned with, him being a professor in kind of this area of publishing different papers and things like that. 

And just kind of staying on top of the research and just being able to crank out valuable work, not just quantity of content, but valuable content for his students and for his audience. 

And so he knows a thing or 20 about the necessity today for us to really rise above all the other noise and all the stuff that's out there, at whatever field that you choose to be in to really stand out.

We really need to be able to cultivate the ability to do exceptional work, especially today when a lot of times you're not bringing the best of yourself even if you think you are, if we're hyper distracted, we've got all this stuff going on, so we're talking about getting smarter Cal Newport knows some powerful insights for us. 

And it is good because he is going to be talking about the value of having set rituals and how this can make us smarter. And also, talking about how to stop wasting our mental energy. So let's check out this clip from the one and only Cal Newport. 

Cal Newport: People who are adept deep workers tend to have rituals that surround their deep work sessions. 

As far as I can tell from a sort of psychological, and neurological perspective what's going on here is, if you have some sort of set ritual you do, it helps your brain shift into the deep work mindset without you having to expend a lot of mental energy or willpower to try to wrench your attention away from something else. 

So Charles Darwin, for example, it's sort of a favorite example of mine, when he was working on the "Origin of Species" at his state in Kent, England, he had built a path called The Sand Walk because it was paved with sand that went past the most scenic parts of the grounds that he owned. 

And he built this ritual that, okay, when I start my deep thinking, Origin of Species, every day, I first do a set number of laps on this path. 

And that would get his mind into the set of like, "Okay, now it's thinking time" by lap one, the concerns of the day would start to wear away by lap 2, he could start booting up in his brain, "Okay, what are the actual issues I need to think about today," maybe by lap 3 he's starting to actually make some progress.

Then he could go from those laps into a study and be prepared to do some real deep work. And that was much more effective than if he just said at some point, "Okay, deep work time," and just swiveled his chair towards the desk and try to work.

Modern deep workers do the same thing. Sometimes it's location, a certain location they go to just for deep work, sometimes like Darwin, it's a particular movement pattern you walk, a particular path you do certain blocks around your neighborhood or on your corporate campus. 

For other people, it's taking the space in which you normally work and transforming it. So if you have an office, for example, it might be clearing anything off your desk, dimming the lights, you just have the bright desk lamp on your lamp itself shutting the door, maybe put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on it. That transformation itself could be ritualistic and help your brain understand.

The other part of these rituals that I see often with successful deep workers is they have very clear rules for how the deep work session unfolds, so they don't have to think about it, they don't have to have these battles with themselves during it. 

Often it's very simple things, like no Internet, no phone maybe the phone gets turned off. Here's the type of brakes you can take like, they set these rules so there's no negotiating. 

And all of this is about preserving mental energy so that you can really focus it on the work itself and not on trying to actually negotiate with other parts of your brain about like, "Well can't we just glance at this," and, "Do we really have to do this now?" 

Shawn Stevenson: You just said something important, let's talk about our mental energy and how that it's not something that's infinite. All right, so let's talk a little bit about that that we've got a certain amount for us to use.

Cal Newport: Yeah, well mental energy, it's incredibly important because feats of cognition use an incredible amount of energy and we underestimate how much just actual metabolic energy is required to do intense thinking, and we can think about it relevant or relative to other types of physical acts that are actually very demanding. 

It uses a lot of energy to do a lot of cognition which means a couple of things. One, you don't want to waste energy like we're just saying, you don't want to waste energy trying to convince yourself to do deep work because that's the energy you can't devote to it. 

Two, you have to understand that we're wired right, we're wired through evolution to not waste energy. And our brain is happy to expend energy if it sees a tiger running at us, our brain knows, "Okay, let's expend energy, let's get out of there, we're going to get eaten," but our brain is not wired through evolution to recognize the long term value of doing deep work.

So the deeper parts of our brain, the planning parts of our brain maybe see an upcoming deep work session as something like, "Oh, why are we going to waste all this energy." You're going to experience that as a feeling of procrastination or lack of motivation.

And so recognizing that is why it requires a lot of ritualistic support and scheduling to actually convince yourself to get started with it.

And the third implication of this is that other types of shallow activities are not neutral, they use energy, especially the social energy that's involved in having to track lots of back and forth social interactions with people you know, that's incredibly draining, tribal energy, we're tribal people so if you're engaged in looking at lots of let's say a political or cultural news where you're sort of on one tribe and someone else on another tribe, our brain is really attuned to that and it's going to burn a lot of energy, think about the emotions you feel every time you check the news these days. 

That's burning fuel that could be going towards producing you things of value. And so that's the third implication, is that it's not harmless, the spend the time surrounding your deep work doing lots of these other sorts of shallow or unnecessarily busy things, all of that is emptying out the gas tank of the fuel you need to actually produce new things that are valuable using your brain.

Shawn Stevenson: Alright, next on our Get Smarter compilation we've got the man that I call "The Most Interesting Man Alive". This is Jesse Itzler. 

And this fellow went from growing up on the East Coast as a young Jewish kid, at a time where in the eighty's, late 1970's, early 1980's when hip hop was hitting the scene. And he decided, "I'm going to be a rapper." 

All right, so he started off in music and dancing and he parlayed that into creating some of the most epic team jingles in history, like for the New York Knicks, for example, he just blew up. Or was it the Mets? Just New York teams, period, I think he did both, but from there, he went to getting into aviation and he didn't know a thing about planes. 

He ended up taking his company to billions of dollars and he didn't have any money when he got started and just building relationships and finding a way to make these things work definitely. 

We're putting all these shows, complete episodes in the show notes for you, check out this episode, it's just so powerful. And so he sold that company, again, it was worth billions of dollars that he built the company up to and he's also one of the founding partners of Zico Coconut Water, and he's also a part owner of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team now, his wife Sara Blakely is the founder of Spanks, this is another billion dollar company, crazy successful, crazy good person, and crazy smart. He knows about getting smarter. 

And in this clip, he's going to be sharing two things. One, having a place to think, how important is that? That's something that we just don't think about and we just kind of try to hammer away and think about stuff whenever we can. 

What if we create a place that we actually can tap into a better method of thinking for us, so that's number one, is having a place to think. And also, he's going to be sharing how to think differently about the experience itself, about the experience. And you'll see what I mean in this clip from the incredible Jesse Itzler.

Jesse Itzler: I think thinking is a lost art form like I mentioned earlier. And for me, I realized that I think best in two places. I think great, very well on an airplane staring out the window and daydreaming, that's where I get a lot of my goals and that's where I just get clarity, no one can bother me on an airplane.

I'm not getting phone calls on an airplane, I don't put my wi-fi on a lot of times on the airplane. I don't just take fake flights just to think, but I appreciate that time and I use it for thinking.

Also in the car, I like to drive and daydream and the third for me has really been running. So wherever it is that you think best, it's important to spend a lot of time there, because that's where you can often get clarity, make big decisions, get ideas. 

You're not going to think great when you're in a crowded space, at a bar. So I try to put myself in a position where I think best as often as I can. 

My wife thinks best in a car, she set up a fake commute. We live five minutes from Spanks, her headquarters but rather than just drive five minutes to work she set up a 40-minute fake commute so she can spend 40 minutes just thinking before she goes into the office. 

Shawn Stevenson: Wow, that's so smart, so smart, and something that we all can find creative ways to do. I was surprised at this one and have gotten to this one, towards the end of the book— experience is overrated. I really am curious why you put that one in here.

Jesse Itzler: Because it takes too long. People always think very often that they've got to get all this experience before they open their restaurant, "I need all this experience before I start my apparel company." 

By the time you wait for your experience, eight other people are going to be in the space, five other people are going to launch your same exact idea. I'm a much bigger believer in getting your foot in the door and figuring it out as you go, you've got to start the process. 

Now listen, experience has its place, I'm not saying it doesn't, I just think sometimes it's an excuse and it's way overrated. 

I had no experience in aviation, we started a private jet company with no airplanes, with no background. We built it to five billion dollars in sales. I had no background, no background or experience in beverage, we sold the Zico to Coca-Cola. 

I had no background in music, you know, I never ran a 100 miles, I had no background in that. 

You don't need experience you need determination, you need passion and not the passion for the product, passion for the process of whatever it takes to get your goal. 

That means people mistake passion, they think they have to have passion for their widget, you've got to have passion for the process, that's the late nights, that's the sacrifice when everybody's at the bar but you've got to stay home and make e-mails, that's what you signed up for. If you don't have the passion for that, it's not going to happen. 

So you've got to have, and I could see it in someone's eye, we sold this concept, we raise money for Marquis Jet, my private jet company I started with my partner. Two guys with no experience, no airplanes, no rich friends basically. 

We raised money because of one thing— man, we had a look in our eyes that said, "No matter what, we're going to get, we're going to take your dollar and we're going to make it work; we're going to figure this out."

The experience came over time. But we didn't wait to get the experience to go and do it, it would have never worked. 

Shawn Stevenson: Alright, next up, we have someone that I could not do an episode about getting smarter without having her on here. She's a neuroscientist, bestselling author and just one of my favorite people and it's Dr.Wendy Suzuki. 

And in this clip, she is going to be talking about how to literally improve the electrical activity in your brain and to improve your overall cognitive function. So let's jump into this clip from Dr. Wendy Suzuki. 

Dr. Wendy Suzuki: So one of our most exciting recent discoveries has to do with the changes that happen after a three-month exercise regiment that we're really trying to get people to increase their cardiorespiratory function. And these were low fit people and we asked them to start going to spin class three times a week and they did, three to four times a week for this three month period. 

And we not only looked at their cognitive function, so their mood improved, their memory, their recognition memory got better, but we also asked, "Could we see any difference in the general electrical activity of their brain?"

And the most sensitive point that we found was what we called Baseline measures, so just taking and this is non-invasive, this is EEG, electroencephalograms where you put a little cap on your head, you might have seen it hospital pictures. 

And you don't feel it at all, yet it's able to measure very broad electrical activity that is being generated by your brain. And we are measuring just as you're either staring at a crosshair on a computer screen or just closing your eyes, just mind wandering either at the beginning of this three month period or after you have completed your exercise regimen or the control group there was video game playing. 

But this isn't a first shooter video game, it was very competitive video scrabble that they were playing for three months, the same amount of time. 

What we found is during these baseline measures, a particular pattern of electrical activity associated with relaxation, it's called the Alpha Wave, when you're relaxing, getting ready for sleep you have higher levels of Alpha. 

And so what we found is after the three months of exercise compared to those video Scrabble players, the people that exercised had higher resting levels of Alpha which basically meant that their brain was more relaxed at baseline when they were in this mind wandering period which is consistent with the better mood that they had and also the better stress, we didn't look at stress response in particular, but other studies have reported that exercise can improve your stress response and also many people notice that in themselves. 

Shawn Stevenson: That was a clip from Dr. Wendy Suzuki, a neuroscientist at NYU and just one my favorite people and we've got another one of my favorite people coming up next. 

And this is Jairek Robbins. Jairek is a good friend of mine, we've done a lot of cool stuff together over the years, and it was really great to sit down with him and to have this conversation and really talking about how to optimize our thinking and our performance. 

Because that's really what he teaches, literally he's somebody that's going all over the world and contacted by some of the biggest organizations and personally bringing on as a private coach for some of the most successful people about performance, right, really tapping into the power of our minds. 

And so in this clip, he is going to be sharing an insight about the necessity to paint a vision and also tracking metrics and a simple question to ask yourself about moving forward in your life. So check out this clip from Mr. Jairek Robbins. 

Jairek Robbins: The easiest frame of reference for people is really simple, if you take out a pen and paper, this is really simple, and you draw yourself a little chart and you put yourself in the bottom corner of starting, and then you put, you want ordinary results in life, like average results, and remember, if you live in the US, average results for humans, they're overweight, unhappy on depression medication, on the verge of divorce and they hate their job. So if you want an average life, go for it. 

But most people I cross paths with, even in the worst situations, you ask them, "Do you want those results?" They are like, "No." No one wakes up dreaming of that in their life. 

And they are like, "No, I want extraordinary results, I want phenomenal results, I want world-class results, I want to be able to travel somewhere, I want to be able to have a happy family. I want to be able to love my spouse for a long time and not want to kill each other every other day. I want to have healthy kids." 

These things are extraordinary and it is sad that they have to say that that's unique and special, that they have all those good things, but it very much is. 

And so in that concept, if ordinary stuff is down here and then you draw up on the scale, and extraordinary stuff is way up here, you've got to ask yourself a big question because there's like living your dream life and then living this average life that most people get frustrated with. 

And if you want these results, the first big question—  Do the habits you have, meaning what you do every day in your health, is it moving you towards this extraordinary life you're trying to have? 

If you just take it and multiply that habit every single day over the next day, week, month, year, 10 years, 5 years, 20 years, does it actually add up? 

Or are you habits taking you to that normally incredibly struggling life even though you are dreaming of this. Because that's what people really get messed up, up here they are dreaming of one thing but their feet are moving in a whole different direction. 

And so it's the concept, the taking it to physical mastery where you know these things, not only do you know them up here but you physically apply them every single day. And every single day you are moving one step closer to that extraordinary dream life that you've painted out. 

There is another thing we talk about on the program, is help people paint that vision. 

If you asked most people, "What do you want 20 years from now?" 

They're like, "Well, I want to have this amazing life, I want to be super healthy, I want to be super in love." 

And you're like, "Okay, great. Well, what does that look like? Give me details?" 

They are like, "I don't know, the great relationship." 

Like, "Okay, how do you know it's a great relationship?" What are you doing? 

They are like, "I guess we love each other."

Shawn Stevenson: I guess.

Jairek Robbins: I guess, I'm like, "Okay if you wanted to have a great business 20 years from now, how would you know it's a great business?"

And all of a sudden metrics come out. "I'd be making this much profit, this much net profit, we'd have this much satisfaction of customers, we'd be delivering to this many people around the world." Like, they know all the metrics in business. 

You're like, "Okay, go back to love, what are the metrics for love? To have an extraordinary love relationship?" And they kind of stare at you funny. 

And like, this is the important habit, because if you don't know what habit to take and what metric to measure, how are you going to get an extraordinary love life? 

Metrics in health, sometimes they know these things, I want to be able to do the splits at 70 years old. Like, "Okay champion, that's the good goal."

Shaw Stevenson: Alright, I hope you are enjoying this Get Smarter compilation so far, and again, these are some of the tactics, some of the insights, but we also have to still pay attention to what are we feeding our minds, what are we actually feeding our brain, because our brains are literally made of the things that we eat, the stuff from the outside world eventually becomes, literally the tissues that our brain is made out of. 

And there are certain things that can create inflammation in our brain which essentially, that means like inflamed means, flame like fire, like there's a little, tiny little group of people in your brain, making smores and roasting wieners, right. 

This is not actually happening but there's like a little fire going on throughout your system, and if your brain is inflamed, we know that there's now a connection that's been proven between inflammation of the hypothalamus gland which is kind of a master regulator of your energy intake, of your appetite and information leading to issues with leptin sensitivity, and satiety, and insulin sensitivity, and the list goes on and on and on. 

And so this is something that we definitely want to address and continue to be proactive about avoiding things that create chronic inflammation and adding in things that are more protective systemically but also specifically for our brains. 

Listen to this, there was a study published by the Public Library of Science that showed that Spirulina has a strong potential to prevent and even reduce inflammation in the brain. Okay, there are very few things studied that can do that, that's how powerful this food is. 

And if you've ever wondered why does Organifi have these as the hallmark things that are in the Green Juice formula, Spirulina, Chlorella, and Wheatgrass is also because they're so rich in chlorophyll, and there's a study that was published in 2014, this is a peer-reviewed journal Appetite, we were just talking about appetite that found that chlorophyll can aid in weight loss and reduce the urge to eat hyper-palatable foods.

What do you think it's doing— reducing brain inflammation. Super powerful stuff and I'm a huge fan of Organifi as are my kids, my wife, I give it to everybody. When I got here I gave some to my producer as well, and we are just huge fans of Organifi. 

And they do stuff the right way, it's cold temperature process, they're sourcing organic, and the company itself is just, they're amazing people there, they're just absolutely amazing and I love those guys. 

And so pop over there, check them out, it's Organifi.com/model, that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I-model, and you get 20 percent off. All right, my gift to you, 20 percent off everything they carry, their Green Juice formula, the Red Juice formula, The Gold, old the Daily Turmeric and everything else. So they've got some incredible stuff, definitely pop over there to check them out. 

If you're interested in fueling your brain and fueling yourselves, period, check them out asap. Alright, organifi.com/model. 

So let's jump back into our Get Smarter compilation, and I got a little surprise for you, I had to do this because he is the leader in the world in accelerated learning, a memory expert. 

Listen, if I rattled off the list of people that have sought out his counsel from Will Smith, to Hugh Jackman, all right and just his clientele is crazy as far as like so-called "celebrity" but also just in the world like people who are executives, who are like heads of the movie studios themselves, helping the actors to be able to memorize their scripts faster and all kinds of stuff like that. 

Jim Kwik is the man, I had to do another clip of Jim and in this clip, he's going to be taking you through a technique, a specific technique to help you to tap into the power of your mind and to use your many different innate ways of thinking to help you to overcome obstacles and to make decisions in your life. 

Check out this clip from my good friend Jim Kwik. 

Jim Kwik: But going back to the Six Thinking Hats, this is a way of changing your perspective, meaning a lot of people don't make new decisions because they're stuck in one mode. 

And so the summary of it, it was created by Edward de Bono and he metaphorically created six color hats and then when you imagine, we know Imagination is more powerful than knowledge, you imagine yourself putting on this color hat you have to look at this decision or this problem through that lens. 

So for example, let's take the white hat, when somebody puts on a white hat, metaphorically, and I'll give you some memory aids because you know, I am the memory guy, white is imagine like a doctor's uniform right, or a scientist's, that reminds you of logic. 

So let's say, I want everybody right now, we'll make this interactive, to think about a decision that you're struggling with or think about a problem that you need to solve.

And I think everybody has one of those things right, going back to Quincy Jones, I remember on stage, I was asking him like about the problems he had not just the successes but the problems he was like, "Jim, I don't have many problems," he was like, "I have puzzles." 

And that's a different way of talking about thinking, a different way of thinking about something because for me, when I think about problems I'm like, "Oh, something I have to deal with and I don't know if I am going to be able to handle this," but puzzles— like fun, puzzles have a solution. 

So it's a different way of thinking because the words change the way we think also. But going back to this, when you think about a problem or decision you have right now, you put on, imagine yourself putting on the white hat and actually physically grab something in front of you and put it on so you have your kinesthetic, your muscles in it. 

And you have to look at the problem or the decision just based on facts and logic. So that's the only way and that's great for individuals because some people are not used to doing it, but when they have that hat on, it forces you to look through that perspective. 

Shawn Stevenson: To be honest with yourself. 

Jim Kwik: Exactly.  

Shawn Stevenson: Because I think a lot of times we are lying to ourselves on how complicated or difficult it might be, so actually using logic can help to get rid of some of that mystery. 

Jim Kwik: That's like your Spock hat, for those people who follow the Star Trek, you have to look at the issue completely logically and more science-based. Now, another color hat—

Shawn Stevenson: Or data. Shout out to data. 

Jim Kwik: Data, there you go, next generation. 

Shawn Stevenson: By the way, that guy was born to play that role. 

Jim Kwik: Oh my God. Oh yeah, completely, So you have to look at it analytically, and even if you don't feel like that's you, play it, make it a game. 

And we've said this, you and I have said this before that it's not that you stop playing because you grew older, you grew older because you stopped playing. And so this is thinking exercise, a thought experiment if you will, because this is an episode all about maximizing your thinking. 

That's what Einstein used to do. Einstein used to do these what he called "thought experiments" you know, these imagination experiments and this is what we're doing right now. 

So you put on the white hat and then you have to look at it through logic. 

You take off the white hat. Now I want you to put on the red hat, so imagine yourself reaching out in front of you, putting on the red hat, and the red hat represents as mnemonic device red is a motion, red is heart, so I want you to think about now how does this make you feel. 

So this gives you permission because some people look at everything logically, but they don't go with their feelings, and that we know, that's a superpower also as well. 

So think about this problem that you have, maybe it's somebody you need to hire, maybe it's somebody in a relationship, whether or not you want to enter a relationship or maybe exit a relationship, you know maybe it's something that has to do with your health.

Think about it now, from an emotional standpoint, so we're wearing the red hat. 

Shawn Stevenson: And by the way, some folks ignore that part, they are just more bent on logic and not being honest about, "How do I feel about this," or even just asking ourselves, "How do I feel about this situation?"

Jim Kwik: Exactly and then when we're talking about being a better thinker, this gives you more perspective, this gives you a spectrum or a rainbow if you will of points of view, so you can see something, we've heard of the like the elephant, where there's an elephant there and you have these blind monks and they're reaching out and they can't see but they just feel and one of them's feeling like the tail and thinks the elephant is a snake and one of them is feeling like the leg of the elephant and thinks it's a tree. 

Everyone sees different parts or feels different parts, but they don't see the whole and through this exercise, you get to see it from these different points of views. So what are all the different color hats? 

Take off the red hat and now what you're going to do is you're going to put on the black hat, so you put on the black hat. Now, a mnemonic device, the black hat is the critic, so what I want you to think about for memory aid, from your memory coach is imagine a judge wearing black robes, that's the one that's going to judge.

So now I want you to look at this and think about what could go wrong here, you know you can meta yourself and think, be the critic here, give yourself— but some people live with the black hat, they are just critical about everything, you know what I mean? But it makes sense, because that's how they were raised, through nurture. 

Shawn Stevenson: And it could be valuable. 

Jim Kwik: Exactly. And it could save you from making mistakes and everything, but you don't see the whole picture. 

And so the black hat, when you put that on, look at this problem or this decision and think about it like, "What could go wrong here?" Think about your plan B and such, any negative consequences. 

Take off the black hat and now what you're going to do is you're on to put on the yellow hat. Now the yellow hat is the opposite of the black hat, yellow is like the sun, it's an opportunity, so what could go right here? 

So that's more of the, if the black is more the critic, the yellow is more opportunistic, this is like what are the benefits that could come out of you making the decision.

Shawn Stevenson: The best case scenario. 

Jim Kwik: Exactly. Now, some people live with the yellow hat, you know like a lot of entrepreneurs do this and they just look at all rosy side of everything and they only see that and then they wonder why, they don't look at the risks, they don't look at the threats, they don't look at the weaknesses or the competition, or anything that could go wrong, they just move towards anything that's pleasurable and that's not necessarily good either. 

So we went through this, we go through the red, we went through white, we went through the red, we went through the black and then the yellow. 

The green hat is the growth hat. So this is where you need to make a decision or solve a problem, when you put on the green hat, green is like growth, it's like plant life, it's like growing grass. 

And so this is where you're thinking out of the box, this is the hat you wear, where it's like what could be an out of the box new, something we're not even thinking about the solution to this whole thing, a different way of looking at it. So green is growth. 

And then finally, the last hat is the blue hat and I say the blue for last because the blue is kind of like the manager of all the other hats, it listens to all the other perspectives, the one with the black hat, the white hat, the yellow hat, the red hat, the green hat, and blue is like the sky, it oversees everything else. 

And so it listens to everything and then it makes the decision because it heard all the different points of view, can weigh it from different perspectives and then that's your answer, if you will.

And so this is kind of a fun strategy and I would really encourage everyone who's listening not just, you know this, knowledge is not power, we've talked about this. 

All the podcasts and the online programs, and the coaching, and the seminars, they don't work unless you work. 

So what I would challenge everybody who's listening to do is this, maybe take a screenshot of this episode, post it, tag both of us and share with us the decision that you applied this to, because then you really get to feel it and see how it works in your life. 

Shawn Stevenson: Next up in our Get Smarter compilation is somebody who I've been a big fan of for many years, even before I really got into the online space and striving to reach and help more people. 

He was killing it right, he's known in the fitness industry, he is like The Godfather. But not just that, he parlayed that over into personal development which he really found was his passion and now he runs many different companies and fitness is still a big part of his life, but he is really focusing on helping people to become the best version of themselves and to really optimize how they think and how they operate in their lives. 

I'm talking about Craig Ballantyne. Craig is going to share with you in this clip some insights about getting smarter and achieving all that you can come down to alignment. Alignment. So check out this clip from The Godfather himself, Craig Ballantyne. 

Craig Ballantyne: So we can use so many different misalignments here, so weight loss world. Mrs. Jones comes to me and says, "Craig, I want to lose 20 pounds." "Great, Mrs. Jones, show me what you're eating." 

You know, she's going one direction with her goals and her dreams and her diet is going the opposite. Like, "I go to Starbucks, I get a unicorn Frappuccino, an espresso Brownie," obviously, those things are misaligned, they're not lined up and you're always going to be wasting energy, frustrated, not having success. 

Me, back in the day, I was during the day telling people how to live, I was living very healthy and Saturday came along and my actions were totally misaligned with my goals. 

And then you have the entrepreneur, "You know I am raising well-adjusted kids, it is my number one priority and my number one value in life." 

"You work 12 hours a day and you have a 2-hour commute each way, how can you tell me that your kids are your number one priority if that is how you act?" 

So for so many people in life, their actions are misaligned with their goals and when that happens, we just feel it in the stomach, right, we feel it inside, we have that anxiety about it and you know, some people's are small some people's are extreme and the bigger that misalignment is, the bigger the blow up is going to be.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, man, that's so good and it's just asking yourself the question right are my actions in alignment with the goals that I have. Very simple thing.

Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, I use- so when I do my workshops, and when I wrote the book, I have a very large section in each of them about your values and your vision, because I say your values and your vision drive every decision.

Because for me, one of my values in life, my health value is I want to feel like I'm seventeen forever. I want to move great, I want to be able to run, jump, play.

So that value dictates the fact that I do this stupid fifteen-minute old man warm-up before every one of my workouts. But it also means that I eat right, that I exercise regularly, that I do some of the stuff I don't want to do because that's an important thing to me, and that means it dictates my daily behavior.

So you need to look at what the most important values are- the most important things for your values are in life. So think about your most important value for your family, your health, your wealth, what experiences do you want to have?

Narrow it down to the most important ones, and then look at how you are living your life, and the more misaligned they are, first of all, the less success you're going to have because you can't say you want something and act in total opposite from it and expect success.

But also, it's going to be more stressful when you're misaligned, and that's the thing you've got to fix.

So you were talking earlier about, you're always living in the future. You are future casting everything. Most people though, Shawn, don't future cast anything. So they have, as I mentioned before, that jumble of jigsaw puzzle pieces in their head.

What we need to do is get that out and spread it out over the table. Simply doing that through journaling- I mean free form journaling, just writing, man that is going to be great for you. Gratitude journaling.

But what I actually have people do is create what I call a vision for your life. And a vision for your life gives you a very clear dream destination for where you want to get to. And when we know where we want to get to, we can build a straight line to success.

So I ask a few questions about where you want to be in the next three years, where you want to be living, who you want to be celebrating an experience with, and what three big accomplishments do you want to achieve in the next couple of years? And what does your family do? What are some of your rituals and routines?

And now you write this out, and I call writing this, this is the movie script for your life, so that when you write it, you write it in such detail that I can see.

Like you tell me like, "Hey, we're going to be living in California. My son is going to be at this college. My other son is going to be in this school. Me and my wife are going to be doing these things, and these are the three things that The Model Health Show is going to allow me to do this, I'm going to write another book." I'm like, "Okay great, I totally see your life."

I mean, everybody listening has painted a picture, right? They've painted a picture of you like down in Malibu or something, the waves are coming in. They see you doing these shows with all these celebrities and they're like, "Oh man, I can hardly wait. Shawn's life is going to be so good."

Now most people, they don't even think about what they're doing next week, tomorrow. They don't get this stuff out of their head, so they've got all that clutter trapped up in there.

So it's like having a yard sale. We're going to have a yard sale of all our ideas, and we're going to chop away some of them, and we're going to refine it, and now you've got this beautiful, beautiful movie of your life that gives you clarity. So clarity is the thing.

We go from clutter, all the thoughts running through your head, to the clarity through that vision exercise. And now you go, "Okay, I see what's important, and now I can align my actions with this vision."

And then it's like the weight of the world is going to be off your shoulders.
Shawn Stevenson: Next up in our Get Smarter compilation is, this was a really special moment for me because somebody who's been a hero of mine and I've been learning from for many ,many years and learning about emotional intelligence and social intelligence even the term emotional intelligence was really impressed upon our culture through Dr. Daniel Goleman who wrote the book "Emotional Intelligence" and "Social Intelligence" and so being able to have this conversation with him was such a great moment and opportunity and learning experience and just to have somebody who has been such an inspiration for me to be able to share with you was just, it just did my heart a lot of good. 

And so in this clip he is going to be talking about mindfulness, we're talking about execution, getting smarter and this term mindfulness has become popular, but what are we really talking about here? 

Because it is important and also some of the impacts that multitasking is having on our brain and some technique, a tactic that you can use that supersedes the damage or the potential drawbacks of multitasking. It's just super interesting and again, it was great to have him on the show and here's a. clip from the incredible Dr. Daniel Goleman. 

Dr. Daniel Goleman: Mindfulness is right now the most popular kind of meditation. It's going into business, going in schools, people using those apps for it. And mindfulness means simply being present without reaction, without judgment to what's happening to your thoughts and to your feelings. It's all it is.  

And to do that you have to establish a kind of neutral platform inside your mind. So very often people will start with just watching the breath, and then you watch your breath, your mind is going to wander, and you're going to bring it back. 

That's a basic move, and by the way, every time you bring it back, you strengthen the circuitry for managing your concentration, for ignoring distractions.  

So mindfulness then extends to, "Okay I'm going to just watch my thoughts, I'm going to watch my feelings. I don't have to let them push me around, I'm just going to see what they are. I'm going to watch them come, and I'm going to watch them go. I'm not going to judge them, I'm not going to put them down, I'm not going to favor this one or that one, just neutral."

That is what mindfulness does. And it has surprising benefits right at the start. One of the things is that it sharpens attention. This is direct training and attention. 

Remember I was saying it's mental fitness, so you get a big bump in attention. You know people like to multi-task. Interesting, the brain doesn't multi-task, it switches very quickly.  

 And if you're very concentrated on one thing, "I've got this project I've got to do," and then you say, "Oh I'll check my email, I'll look on Facebook," that's multi-tasking.  

When you go back to that first thing, it takes you a long time to ramp up to that level of concentration you had before, unless you do mindfulness. If you do ten minutes of mindfulness, it nullifies the loss of concentration for multi-tasking. 

Shawn Stevenson:  Wow. 

Dr. Daniel Goleman:  So it's remarkably powerful. Another thing, another benefit for students is this. You learn better. Working memory as we call it is stronger. The ability to pay attention to what you're taking in, transfer it to long-term memory, and bring it back.  

So college students who learned mindfulness got a 30% higher score on the graduate school entrance exam.  

So mindfulness pays off right at the beginning.  

It also strengthens the brain's circuitry that controls negative emotions. So when you get upset, you recover more quickly. That's the actual definition of resilience is how quickly you recover from being upset, stressed, or distressed. So it has huge payoffs.

Shawn Stevenson: All right, next up in our Get Smarter compilation is one of the greatest personal coaches and life coaches, who really is far more than that on the planet. Christine Hassler, she is so insightful and just delivers so much value, this is one of my favorite episodes of the show. 

And in this clip she's going to be sharing with you the power of acceptance and awareness to help us to get smarter and make better decisions so that we can achieve better success. So let's check out this clip from the incredible Christine Hassler. 

Christine Hassler: Totally accepting who you are, where you are, what has happened, what hasn't happened, and by accepting I don't mean you have to like it, or that you resign and go, "Oh this is just the way it is. I'm going to be broke forever, or single forever, or not like my body forever," or whatever. Not saying that at all. 

But when we're constantly like not liking where we are right now, and we're fighting with reality, or we can't believe someone did that to us, or we're still mad at our parents, or whatever it is, then we just have an uphill battle. 

And we can maybe set goals, and get clear about what we want, but if we don't accept where we are now, then what we want might be skewed by wanting to get out of our current reality. So it's more from the desperation, it's more from a place of pain. 

So we always want to be clear about our come from, and if we really accept where I am right now, what can I learn, and what do I need right now, then the what I want next becomes more clear. 

When we're in that place of acceptance, it kind of looks like, "Okay here are the things in my life that are going well. Here are the things that I would like to change.'" And not from a place of judgment, from a place of observation.

So in "Expectation Hangover" on the behavioral level, I have people take on the role of the observer. Stop being such a judger of yourself and just observe your life. 

Like look at your reactions to things. Look at the way you respond to people. Look at what you eat during the day or how you exercise or whatever, and see how it feels. 

Like look at how you're doing in your current life and then start to make changes from there. And then we can start to look at what we want from a place of high involvement but low attachment, because the "what I want" thing can become tricky when our self-worth, our happiness, our joy is attached to that.

We're back to the when-then. "When I have this money, when I have this job, then I'll be X, Y, Z."

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

Christine Hassler: So focus on how you want to feel versus the form you want. Does that make sense?

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

Christine Hassler: Like focus on your desires. I love Danielle LaPorte's work because she always talks about like you're chasing a feeling, not an actual thing.

So focus on the feeling that you want, what you want to create in the world rather than, "I want this job, or I want this relationship, or I want this whatever it may be," and really be open to the package that it comes in.

Because when we're super attached, sometimes we can also slow things down a lot.

Shawn Stevenson: Alright, running the anchor for our Get Smarter compilation is a straight up superhero and this is Tom Bilyeu, he's the host of Impact Theory which is just taking over the internet. I was going to say taking over the world, but then it makes me think “Pinky and the Brain“ and he was kind of up to no good. 

But Tom is up to good, okay, and it was an absolutely powerful episode and he just dropped jewel after jewel, insight after insight. And Tom's story is coming from not the best conditions to being one of the co-founders of a billion dollar organization in Quest Nutrition and for him, his modus operandi was always to be able to make films and to make specifically positive media, because you know there's so much negativity that's out there today, but to counterbalance that stuff and to deliver positive media. And so that's something that he's really funneled his time and attention into. 

And on this clip here to close out this compilation, he's sharing that in order for you to get smarter, in order for you to truly tap into your potential, you first need a change in your beliefs. So let's check out this clip from the one and only Tom Bilyeu. 

Tom Bilyeu: I think the honest answer is recognizing the physics of the human animal. So we are the ultimate adaptation machine. We've become the apex predator because of our ability to adapt. 

So every species through evolution has had to make the choice to become hardwired, or do we become- are we set for flexibility? And most animals are hardwired. That's why a horse comes out and it can walk and run the day it's born, right? 

Think about that from a human perspective when kids start walking at like a year or some crazy thing. So we're born for maximum flexibility. We're a ball of jelly, can't hold its own head up, has to be cared for, but what we've traded off for is the ability to go in essentially any direction. 

Now if you can believe that, and if you can believe in brain plasticity, meaning that the brain responds to the environment that you can learn virtually anything and the brain will actually rewire itself to accommodate that new knowledge. 

So then it's like, "Okay if you believe in that," and that's really- when I say humans lead with belief, which I think its 100% fundamental and true, you don't do anything until you believe you're going to get a positive result. 

Now that doesn't mean that I don't pick up a basketball unless I think I can win the NBA finals. It means that when I pick up that basketball, I believe that I can improve. 

So that is the core fundamental step one; believe that you can get better over time. Now if you need further scientific proof of that, when they decoded the human genome they thought, "This is it. We're going to solve everything. Cancer is going to be gone, heart disease is gone, everything just gone, gone, gone. We're going to be able to solve all these problems."

And they realized, "Wait a second, there's only 20,000 genes in the human genome? How can that be possible when an onion- some types of onions have 40,000 genes? Are we really saying that an onion is more complicated than a human being?"

And the answer of course is, "No", but they were discarding all of the stuff they called junk DNA. Then they realized what junk DNA actually is, is epigenetic signaling. 

So it's our encoding's way of saying, "Okay these are the 20,000 genes you have but I can turn them on a lot, I can turn them off, I can turn them on a little bit," right? Like all these shades of gray. 

Now you take those 20,000 and magnify them over our near infinite ability to respond to our environment, and you get this crazy apex predator that's capable of just about anything. 

So I just want people to understand that, because what happens is people develop an identity of who they are. By the time they hear my message, good Lord, like they have such a solid view of who they are that is so influenced by literally the zip code that they grew up in, okay? 

Not like what they're capable of, the zip code that they grew up in is going to form their own opinion about themselves and what's possible. 

That's so horrifying to me that I can't even begin to tell you. So just believe humans as a species can adapt in any direction. 

Now people will believe it as kids, they have a harder time believing it as adults because there are things that are slightly more stubborn and all that, but you still can change in any direction that you want if you're willing to put the time and energy into it.

Shawn Stevenson: I hope that you enjoyed this episode and this compilation to help you to get smarter. And as Jim mentioned earlier in this compilation, knowledge is not power, it's really potential power and it's whether or not we're going to put these things into action for ourselves in our lives, that's really going to tell the tale of the results that you get, right. 
 
So you got a lot of different things to take from this and to apply and if you got a lot of value from this episode please share it out with your friends and family on social media and of course tag me and let me know what you thought of the episode, I am at Shawnmodel on Instagram, that's S-H-A-W-N model on Instagram. 
 
And on Twitter, I pop into Twitter drop some random ideas as well every now and then, so you can tag me there as well. And on Facebook I'm at The Model Health Show. 
 
So I appreciate you so much for hanging out with me today and again, I hope that you got a lot of value out of this and really enjoyed it as much as I did.
 
I appreciate you immensely, have an amazing day. 
 
I appreciate you immensely.
 
Okay, I appreciate you immensely, we've got some powerhouse episodes coming up so make sure to stay tuned.
 
Take care, have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. 
 
And for more after the show make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com, that's where you can find all of the show notes, you can find transcriptions, videos for each episode and if you've got a comment you can leave me a comment there as well. 
 
And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome and I appreciate that so much.
 
Take care, I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. 
 
Thanks for tuning in.