00:00I didn't start out with this ability.
00:03I had actually learning disabilities growing up.
00:07I had an accident when I was five years old.
00:09I was in school, and I fell off a chair headfirst into a heater.
00:16And because of it, I was rushed to the emergency room,
00:19and I had learning difficulties, poor focus, poor memory.
00:24They called it processing issues,
00:26where teachers would repeat themselves over and over again,
00:29and I didn't understand.
00:31I had migraines every day.
00:33I thought it was normal.
00:34Balance issues when I was five, six, seven.
00:37It took me three years longer to learn how to read.
00:40That was very difficult.
00:41It really hurt my self-esteem.
00:45I had a lot of self-doubt, a lot of fears around not having the answers.
00:51Maybe some people could relate to it.
00:53When I was nine years old, I was slowing down in class,
00:55and I was being teased and bullied for it.
00:58And a teacher came to my defense.
01:00She pointed to me in front of the whole class and said,
01:02leave that kid alone.
01:03That's the boy with the broken brain.
01:05So I was known as the boy with the broken brain through school.
01:10And when I was 18, I learned some strategies.
01:12I started studying the brain.
01:14I was obsessed with answering this one question,
01:16how does my brain work so I could work my brain?
01:18It's one of the reasons why our courses and our work is,
01:22the book and everything is so, so popular,
01:24because people are just drowning in information.
01:27It's like taking a sip of water out of a fire hose.
01:29The amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds,
01:31but how we learn it and read it and retain it is the same.
01:33So that growing gap creates something called digital deluge,
01:36information anxiety.
01:38They call it information fatigue syndrome,
01:40which has health consequences, higher blood pressure,
01:43compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness, right?
01:46Because we can't keep up with it all.
01:49So teaching people how to learn faster, read faster, focus better,
01:53retain information to be able to keep up with this data overwhelm.
01:57Research shows that actually it'll help you live longer,
02:01studying each day.
02:03And there was a study done with nuns.
02:05They were living 80, 90 and above, kind of like your grandparents.
02:09Half of it, they found out their longevity was their faith,
02:14emotional gratitude, all that.
02:16The other half, though, was they were lifelong learners.
02:19They were studying every day.
02:20They were having deep conversations.
02:22And because of it, added years to their life and then life to their years.
02:26The study was on Time Magazine, the cover.
02:29The study's called Aging with Grace.
02:31So you want to keep your brains active.
02:34Because the two dips we see in cognitive performance is when people graduate
02:40school, because some students associate education and learning as the same,
02:45that when their education's done, their learning is done, right?
02:48And when people retire.
02:50Often when people retire, they don't quite use their minds as actively,
02:55and that can be a challenge also as well.
02:57So new learnings.
02:59And then finally, the last number 10 key for better brain is stress management.
03:04And we talked about this already.
03:06The chronic stress shrinks your hippocampus,
03:09and you create cortisol, adrenaline.
03:11It puts you in fight or flight.
03:13So on a scale of zero to 10, 10 being the best,
03:16how are you coping with stress?
03:18Some people, they go get a massage.
03:21Some people, they meditate.
03:22Some people, they go out in nature or spend time with their pets.
03:25But we need mechanisms and activities to be able to reduce that stress buildup,
03:32because that stress could lead to other challenges down the road.
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