Kwik Quotes

Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.

Knowledge is power: You hear it all the time but knowledge is not power. It's only potential power. It only becomes power when we apply it and use it. Somebody who reads a book and doesn't apply it, they're at no advantage over someone who's illiterate. None of it works unless YOU work. We have to do our part. If knowing is half the battle, action is the second half of the battle.

Our most precious gift is our brain. It is what allows us to learn, love, think, create, and even to experience joy. It is the gateway to our emotions, to our capacity for deeply experiencing life, to our ability to have lasting intimacy. It allows us to innovate, grow, and accomplish.

I will see it when I believe it.

Perfectionism reduces creativity and innovation,

New belief: There is no such thing as failure. Only failure to learn.

Give a person an idea, and you enrich their day. Teach a person how to learn, and they can enrich their entire life.

If you’re struggling to find motivation to learn, or to accomplish anything else in your life, there is a good chance you haven’t uncovered the why of the task.

If our mindset is not aligned with our desires or goals, we will never achieve them.

To remember any new piece of information, you must associate it with something you already know.

Our most precious gift is our brain.

All behavior is driven by belief, so before we address how to learn, we must first address the underlying beliefs we hold about what is possible.

Motivation is a set of emotions (painful and pleasurable) that act as the fuel for our actions.

You can learn to unlimit and expand your mindset, your motivation, and your methods to create a limitless life. When you do what others won’t, you can live how others can’t.

you don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training.

you make mistakes; mistakes don’t make you.

If you are struggling to reach a goal in any area, you must first ask: Where is the limit? Most likely, you’re experiencing a limit in your mindset, motivation, or methods—which means that it’s not a personal shortcoming or failure pointing to any perceived lack of ability.

Reasons that are tied to your purpose, identity, and values will sufficiently motivate you to act, even in the face of all of the daily obstacles that life puts in your way.

Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we must be accountable for who we become.

What I have come to find over my years of working with people is that most everyone limits and shrinks their dreams to fit their current reality.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted that, “Life is C between B and D,” meaning that the life we live is the choices we make between the “B” of birth and the “D” of death.

But being limitless is not about being perfect. It’s about progressing beyond what you currently believe is possible.

In a era of autonomously driven electric cars and vehicles capable of taking us to Mars, our education system is the equivalent of a horse and carriage.

A man who degraded and threatened women made you want to do everything possible. Howl and scream; march; give a speech; call Congress around the clock; fall in love with someone decent; show a young woman that all is not lost, despite the evidence; change the way it feels to be a woman walking down a street at night anywhere in the world, or a girl coming out of a KwikStop in Macopee, Massachusetts, in daylight, holding an ice cream. She wouldn’t have to worry about her breasts, whether they would ever grow, or grow big enough. She wouldn’t have to think anything physical or sexual about herself at all unless she wanted to. She could dress the way she liked. She could feel capable and safe and free, which was what Faith Frank had always wanted for women.

Some people who claim to have twenty years of experience have one year of experience that they’ve repeated twenty times.

Remember that we tend to remember that which we create.

Before each reading, take a few minutes to talk about or write what you remember from the previous reading.

The human brain does not learn as much by consumption as it does by creation.

How can I use this? Why must I use this? When will I use this?

If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If broken by an inside force, life begins. Great things always begin from the inside.

When you do what others won’t, you can live how others can’t.

Pain can be your teacher, if you use it and not let it use you. Use pain to drive you to make things happen.

Motivation comes from purpose, fully feeling and associating with the consequences of our actions (or inactions).

If we believe that it’s not possible to improve, then in reality it won’t be possible to improve. It’s extremely difficult to accomplish something when you don’t believe it can be done in the first place.

Mindset (the WHAT): deeply held beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions we create about who we are, how the world works, what we are capable of and deserve, and what is possible. Motivation (the WHY): the purpose one has for taking action. The energy required for someone to behave in a particular way. Method (the HOW): a specific process for accomplishing something, especially an orderly, logical, or systematic way of instruction.

It’s not accurate that your memory works like a container, cup, or hard drive in that once it’s full of data no more can fit. It’s more like a muscle in that the more you train it, the stronger it gets and the more you can store.

The important distinction here is that family is a means value—a means to an end. The end value is actually love or belonging. When we look at our values, we can determine whether the value we’ve stated is an end or whether it evokes something else.

Make sure you have a block of time set aside to get into flow. It’s commonly believed that, when conditions are right, it takes about 15 minutes to achieve a flow state and that you don’t really hit your peak for closer to 45 minutes. Clearing out only half an hour or so isn’t going to allow you to accomplish much. Plan to set aside at least 90 minutes, and ideally a full two hours.

Scientists have learned that animals that experience prolonged stress have less activity in the parts of their brain that handle higher-order tasks—for example, the prefrontal cortex—and more activity in the primitive parts of their brain that are focused on survival, such as the amygdala.

Consider your passion, your desired identity, and your values: How can they create the basis for your reasons?

Life is the c between b and d

Whenever possible, try to do one thing at a time.

by taking breaks, you create more beginnings and endings, and you retain far more of what you’re learning.

knowledge is important, but it is “the performing of some action” that is required to make it powerful.

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, so it follows that if you don’t know why you do what you do, how will anyone else?

Your time is one of your greatest assets. It’s the one thing you can’t get back.

The treasure you seek is in the work you're avoiding

The purpose supersedes the discomfort.

He held up a finger, saying, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” I later learned he was paraphrasing a quote often attributed to Mark Twain.

Knowledge × Action = Power

In his TED talk about sleep, Dr. Jeff Iliff of Oregon Health and Science University takes the “laundry cycle” metaphor even further. He notes that, while we’re awake, the brain is so busy doing other things that it doesn’t have the capacity to clean itself of waste. The buildup of this waste, amyloid-beta, is now being linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Do you remember what it was like when you were approaching your teens and you first started formulating thoughts and opinions independent of your parents? My guess is that this experience was extremely liberating for you and that it might have even been the first time in your life when you truly felt like your own person. What had happened to you, of course, was that your critical faculties had become refined enough to allow you to regularly employ reason to navigate through life.

If at all feasible, allow yourself to do whatever you’re doing to the exclusion of everything else. If you’re on the phone, don’t scroll through social media at the same time. If you’re making breakfast, don’t also work on your to-do list for the day. By doing one thing at a time, your concentration “muscle” will become incredibly

I suggest you use the Pomodoro technique, a productivity method developed by Francesco Cirillo based on the idea that the optimal time for a task is 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break.2 Each 25-minute chunk is called a “Pomodoro.” As you read this book, I suggest that you read for one Pomodoro and then take a 5-minute brain break before continuing.

The purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern. . . . How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out. . . . The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.

Perfectionism reduces creativity and innovation,” writes Hara Estroff Marano, editor at large and the former editor in chief of Psychology Today. “It is a steady source of negative emotions; rather than reaching toward something positive, those in its grip are focused on the very thing they most want to avoid—negative evaluation. Perfectionism, then, is an endless report card; it keeps people completely self-absorbed, engaged in perpetual self-evaluation—reaping relentless frustration and doomed to anxiety and depression.

Do you remember what it was like when you were approaching your teens and you first started formulating thoughts and opinions independent of your parents? My guess is that this experience was extremely liberating for you and that it might have even been the first time in your life when you truly felt like your own person. What had happened to you, of course, was that your critical faculties had become refined enough to allow you to regularly employ reason to navigate through life. Why, then, would you want to turn this liberating skill over to a device? Think about it: How do you feel when someone tries to impose their thinking on you?

a simple chicken emergency kit A simple chicken emergency kit should include: STYPTIC POWDER. To help blood clot, use cornstarch or flour, or use Kwik Stop which can be found at most pet stores. ANTIBIOTIC OINTMENT. Be sure to buy a product intended for animal use. VET WRAP. This bandage clings to itself and inhibits bleeding without cutting off circulation. HYDROGEN PEROXIDE. Use this to wash wounds. STERILE GLOVES. STERILE COTTON BALLS AND SWABS. Use these to help clean and dry wounds. TOWEL. You can wrap the bird in this for safe handling. LIST OF VETERINARIAN PHONE NUMBERS to call in an emergency.

Remember that your mind is like a parachute—it only works when it’s open.

unlimiting un·lim·it·ing (noun) The act or process of casting aside inaccurate and restrictive perceptions of one’s potential and embracing the reality that, with the right mindset, motivation, and methods, there are no limitations.

with competence comes confidence

First, you make sure you’re clear on what you need to address. Then, you determine that you have all the facts in front of you. Next, you make sure you’re dealing with the issue with a positive perspective. Then, you get real about the challenges you’re facing, and allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling about it. After this, you allow yourself to attack the problem from perspectives you might not have considered before, letting your imagination run free. And then you circle back to make sure you’ve addressed what you set out to address during this session

your past doesn’t equal your future.

the life you live are the lessons you teach.

Block out at least 15 minutes each day for reading and put it in your calendar like an important appointment. Commit to making reading part of your daily habit.

In an NPR interview, New York Times tech reporter Matt Richtel said that after 20 years of glorifying technology as if all of it were good, “I think science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies and some technology is Brussels sprouts. If we consume too much technology, just like if we consume too much food, it can have ill effects.”2

One of the keys to exponential thinking is filling your thoughts with what-if statements. Evie Mackie of the Innovation Hub at the John Lewis Partnership says that “‘What If’ statements come into play to bring unruly scenarios into the picture. For example, ‘What if the human race needed to adapt and live in a world which was 90 percent underwater’ or ‘What if we could no longer touch things with our hands to interact.’ This helps conceptualize a WHOLE different array of things we may never have thought of otherwise and allows us to imagine what we would need to survive in a future world, which could be a very different place.

The formula is: Learn. Earn. Return. No hero’s journey is exclusively for the benefit of the hero. With your newfound knowledge, help those around you to learn better and faster and unlimit themselves.

Know yourself. Trust yourself. Love yourself. Be yourself. And remember, the life you live are the lessons you teach. Be limitless.

Don’t let school interfere with your education.

The incremental mindset focuses on making something better, while the exponential mindset is focused on making something different,” he notes. “Incremental is satisfied with 10 percent. Exponential is out for 10X.”14 “The incremental mindset draws a straight line from the present to the future,” Bonchek continues. “A ‘good’ incremental business plan enables you to see exactly how you will get from here to there. But exponential models are not straight. They are like a bend in the road that prevents you from seeing around the corner, except in this case the curve goes up.

having a good understanding of what the exponential mindset looks like. In a piece for the Harvard Business Review, Mark Bonchek, founder and chief epiphany officer of Shift Thinking, describes the linear mindset as a line appearing on a graph that rises gradually over time. He then juxtaposes this with a second line that curves upward, slowly at first, and then shooting over the other line before heading far off the graph. This is his visual depiction of the exponential mindset.

The primary enemy to focus is distraction.

Concentration is at the crux of all human success and endeavor,

you notice the light of your awareness beginning to shine on something else, bring that ball back to the

Leaders are readers.

Studies show that there is a direct relationship between your ability to read and your success in life.

be truly present in any situation where you want to remember something.

Matt Richtel said that after 20 years of glorifying technology as if all of it were good, “I think science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies and some technology is Brussels sprouts. If we consume too much technology, just like if we consume too much food, it can have ill effects.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

mindset is not aligned with our desires or goals, we will never achieve them.

First, your purpose. The reason why matters. I want to age well and am committed to lifting weights and getting stronger even though it is not my favorite thing to do. The purpose supersedes the discomfort.

After that, I have a tall glass of water. Hydration is so important first thing in the morning because our bodies lose a lot of water while we sleep through the simple act of breathing. Remember: Our brains are approximately 75 percent water, so if we’re going to fire up our brains, we need to be well hydrated.

Pomodoro

Information times emotion helps create long-term memories. The opposite is also true.

WHAT LIMITING BELIEFS DO TO US Limiting beliefs are often revealed in our self-talk, that inner conversation that focuses on what you’re convinced you can’t do rather than what you already excel at and what you’re going to continue to achieve today and into the future. How often do you stop yourself from attempting to do something or from pursuing a dream because that voice convinces you that it is beyond your reach? If this sounds like you, you are very far from alone, but you’re also not doing yourself any favors. “We come into this world not knowing if life is hard or easy, if money is scarce or abundant, if we’re important or unimportant. We look at two people who know everything: our parents,”1 said belief change expert Shelly Lefkoe in our podcast interview. Parents are our first teachers, and although they probably meant us no harm, we still come away from our childhoods with the limiting beliefs they unconsciously instilled in us.

Knowledge is not power. It only has the potential to be power.

Why is your morning routine so important? I strongly believe that if you jump-start your day by jump-starting your brain with a series of simple activities, you have a huge advantage.

it took an average of 66 days for the new behavior to become a habit, though it took individual participants as little as 18 days and as many as 254.9

Before I even get out of bed, I spend some time reflecting on my dreams. Dreams are an expression of the work your subconscious is doing while you’re sleeping, and there’s gold to be mined from them. Many geniuses throughout history have regularly accessed and often gleaned their best ideas and made their greatest discoveries from their dreams. Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein in her dreams. A dream was the source of Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday,” and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The first thing I do after I get out of bed is make the bed. This is a success habit, my first accomplishment of the day. It’s an easy win, and it has the added advantage of making my bedtime more pleasant, because it’s always nicer to return that night to a bed that is made.

Dr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as having eight characteristics:2 Absolute concentration Total focus on goals The sense that time is either speeding up or slowing down A feeling of reward from the experience A sense of effortlessness The experience is challenging, but not overly so Your actions almost seem to be happening on their own You feel comfort with what you are doing

Kotler believes that finding flow is the “source code” of motivation. When you find flow, you get “maybe the most potent dose of reward chemistry” your brain can give you—which is the reason he believes flow is the most addictive state on Earth. Once we start to feel flow in an experience, we are motivated to do what it takes to get more. But it’s a circular relationship—if you have motivation to accomplish a task but you have no flow, you will eventually burn out. Motivation and flow need to work together, and they must be coupled with a solid recovery protocol, like good sleep and nutrition.

you’re going to find yourself in a flow state, eliminating distractions is absolutely essential. It can take you up to 20 minutes to reconnect with what you’re doing after you’ve been distracted from doing it.

One of the most efficient flow preventers is a lack of clarity. If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s likely that casting around for a mission will keep flow at bay.

If you have lots of outside stressors in your life—deadlines, relationship issues, family problems, worries about your job security, etc.—they’re likely to sneak up on you at any given moment. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of thinking about something entirely different when you’re suddenly ambushed by an anxious reminder that you’re facing some troubles at home. Once that thought is in your head, any opportunities for flow are crushed. Defeating this supervillain requires two expert moves. The first is to look the supervillain in the eye before you start and ask yourself if there’s anything that you absolutely must deal with before you can get into flow. If the answer is yes, address that first. But in all likelihood, the answer will be no. It isn’t that the stressors aren’t real, but they often don’t need your immediate attention, and they aren’t going to be worse two hours from now. If that’s the case, contend with this supervillain by putting up your force field. Make your space impenetrable by outside stressors so you can concentrate completely on the task at hand.

Juliet Funt is the CEO of the consulting firm WhiteSpace at Work. She describes whitespace as “the thinking time, the strategic pause that’s in between the busyness.”6 When she was on my podcast, Juliet called whitespace “the oxygen that allows everything else to catch fire.

What both Greenberg and Funt are identifying is the need for all of us to have more time when our minds aren’t cluttered. It’s obvious how doing this will positively affect our mental health. But what’s less obvious is how it will also dramatically improve our focus and our productivity.

Holistic health expert Andrew Weil, M.D., developed a breathing tool that he calls the 4–7–8 Method. It works like this: Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound. Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of 4. Hold your breath for a count of 7. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of 8. This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

we all have the same purpose: to help other people through our passion.