The people who are doing the best to get through the last year of quarantine are challenging themselves to learn something new.

Whether it be learning another language, taking up an instrument, or jumping into a new hobby, stimulating our brains is a great way to redirect our focus from much of the external gloom and doom surrounding us and threatening our well-being.

It doesn’t hurt to binge-watch an extraordinary new television series either, but those who can find a balance likely feel happier and better adjusted to these unsettled times.

I wrote a recent article offering some great learning tips on unleashing your inner genius. The author is Jim Kwik, and the book is called, Limitless: Core Techniques to Improve Performance, Productivity, and Focus. There are so many great tips and exercises to share, but it would’ve turned my article into a much longer read. I decided to pick three of my favorite tips, or those where I had personal struggles with myself.

It occurred to me that I don’t need to share everything I learned in a single, 20-minute read article. I have “limitless” boundaries if I break up the lessons into two or three stand-alone pieces of 6 or 7-minutes each.

It was a self-smack in the head. Sometimes we place self-imposed limits on ourselves. Once I embraced this freedom to share these lessons through multiple installments, it was like a breath of fresh air. All it took is a slight shift in how I think.

You Have the Power to Change Your Brain

For me, the difficulty I have with writing isn’t the writing itself. It’s not finding the time or coming up with ideas for an article. It’s not the discipline required to get my butt in the chair to write every day.

My biggest struggle with writing comes from feeling inadequate when I compare my progress to other accomplished writers. I easily fall into the trap of thinking I’m not as good as they are. I’ll never master the skills, build the following, get into the prominent publications and earn the money these other writers are making.

It’s not the right way to measure growth, and it can prevent us from reaching our full potential. When I adjust my thinking and compare my development as a writer from where I began and where I am today, it puts everything in perspective. I can see I’ve made measurable progress. I’ve reached many publishing goals too.

There are beginner writers who might even look to me and what I’ve accomplished so far as inspiration. The message here is that a simple shift in how we think about something can change the whole story. In my case, it changed my inner-narrative from being a failure to a success. Our brain is highly neuroplastic.

That is to say, throughout our life, it changes—a lot. We have more control of the direction it takes than we might think.

Our brains don’t reach full capacity and then go downhill from there

It was widely believed that our brains reach full capacity at adolescence, and then it is all downhill from there. There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Limitless author, Jim Kwik, provides a clear example of this when considering London cabbies. To be a cab driver in London is no easy task — a lot of learning is required to pass the challenging exam. A prospective candidate must spend a minimum of 3–4 years memorizing twenty-five-thousand streets in just one 10-kilometer area of the city. This has proven to have a profound effect on their brain.

Researchers found that having to memorize thousands of streets forced their brains to create new neural pathways. This changed the brain structure; they actually increased the gray matter in their memory centers. This is good news for us.

We must first purge our mind of LIEs

LIEs is an abbreviation for what the author calls Limited Ideas Entertained. One of these LIEs is that our IQ is fixed for life. Our IQ scores tend to stay more or less stable over time, but this doesn’t limit our capacity to learn. Our intelligence level can grow over time.

This idea of a fixed IQ is not only a LIE, but it can prove limiting and harmful in how we think about our potential to keep learning and growing. Does this mean we all have the potential for genius? Maybe — maybe not, but we can definitely work to move closer in that direction.

To Improve Memory and Concentration Try Visualization Techniques

People often tell me that I have an excellent memory. I don’t think it’s so much good as oddly selective on some of the details I can recall about events long-past. At this moment, I’d have to struggle to remember what clothes I wore yesterday. Yet, I can relay verbatim a silly conversation I had with friends many years ago. Most people will declare having either a “good memory” or a “bad memory.”

Instead, you might want to think of it more as a trained memory or an untrained one. The author maintains that there are techniques you can learn to train your memory. Word association is one of these methods. This approach also works well with numbers, or really anything else you need to remember with visual imagery.

Kwik gives a clear example of this: Let’s suppose you are shown a list of objects — fire hydrant, balloon, battery, barrel, board, and diamond.

Now you’re asked to memorize the list. Many of us would attempt this by repeating the list of objects over in our heads. For most of us, this only goes so far. We get distracted, drop our focus, and suddenly the list becomes muddled.

Instead, think about a senseless story that includes all the words. For example, imagine a fire hydrant floating up into the sky as it’s being lifted away by a giant balloon. But the balloon can’t possibly have enough power to lift the heavy hydrant — and that’s why there’s a battery pack on the balloon to supplement the extra lift.

The hydrant will float so far until it hovers over a large barrel. This barrel is sitting on the end of a board, like a seesaw. Once the hydrant is released and falls into the barrel, the fire hydrant’s weight and velocity will catapult a large diamond towards you. Catch it, and the treasure is all yours.

That story was so much fun to play with, I made up my own version, using the author's original objects. But you get the point. So what if the story comes out like some crazy dream or psychedelic-inspired trip. As long as you can imagine it, your list is easy to recall.

A similar memory trick works well to help prepare for a speech or presentation. It’s called the loci method. It works by first identifying the ten key points that you want to talk around. Next, imagine a familiar space that you know well. Then you want to think about a path through the room.

By assigning each of your talking points to a different object or place in the room, you can effectively hit each point. A wall clock might represent your keynote. When practicing your presentation, use your loci or locations as your guide as you walk through to each topic.

Summation

We all have the power to change our brains and continue learning despite our IQ scores. Memorization is a great way to exercise the brain and increase learning potential. Our intelligence level can actually grow over time. By using visualization techniques, we can improve our memories. Now that we’ve done away with a few myths begin changing your own story and increasing more of that gray matter.

Jim Farina