Limitless,, Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

PURPOSE

How do certain defining phrases determine who you are?

How do your values define you?

What does your sense of purpose say about who you are?

For the longest time, my kryptonite was lack of sleep. Sleep has never been easy for me. As a kid for years I was pulling regular all-nighters, studying long hours trying to compensate for my learning challenges. I developed bad sleeping problems. I was always tired at school, but I would plow through the fatigue anyway because I had a strong desire to work hard and make my family proud. My purpose and reasons were super-clear, so I was plenty motivated. Even after I learned accelerated learning skills at age 18 and I no longer had to put in crazy hours, my sleeplessness continued into adulthood and has grown steadily worse—two to four hours total of very interrupted sleep for about 20 years.

The longer you go without sleep, the harder it becomes to maintain a sense of reality—or motivation, for that matter. Lack of sleep compromises all of your cognitive skills, your focus, your memory, and your overall brain health. A common contributing factor for depression and many mood disorders is lack of sleep. I can attest to the dark places I’ve found myself in as a result of lack of sleep. My intense speaking and global travel schedule certainly did not help; one year I was on the road for 235 days. Time zones, jet lag, unfamiliar stale hotel rooms, you get the picture. And my brain was
feeling it; just imagine a memory expert forgetting what city he is waking up in.
This puzzled me, because as a long-time meditation student, my mind was not ruminating or racing at night; it was as calm as could be. It was only a handful of years ago, when I ended up hospitalized from multiple nights without rest, that I participated in an overnight sleep study and was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, a physical disorder where evidently I stopped breathing more than 200 times each and every night.
Today, after multiple treatments, I’m happy to say my sleep is worlds better. Once I was able to fix the physical obstruction with surgery, I was then able to optimize my sleep with a number of tools I will cover in Chapter 8.
During my most difficult moments, I’ve asked myself why I continue to do what I do. Why struggle when I could easily tell myself I don’t have the energy for this? As a child, my purpose and motivation (motive for taking action) was to compensate for my lack of talent with hard work, to prove to myself I was capable. But once I’d leveled up my learning, why did I continue to work so hard—despite being exhausted, sleep-deprived, and an extreme introvert—to make speech after speech, video after video, podcast after podcast? It’s the same thing that drove me as a child: I have clear and definite purpose. I don’t want anyone to struggle and suffer the way I did. The mission that drives me is to unlock better, brighter brains.
Often our greatest struggles lead to our greatest strengths. My two biggest challenges as a child were learning and public speaking. Life has a sense of humor because I spend most of my life public speaking on learning. I couldn’t read, and now I teach people from all over the world how to read better. I struggled to understand my brain, and now I speak in front of audiences of thousands to help them understand the amazing tool they possess. I’ve learned there is a gift in most challenges. In the same way, decades of lack of sleep has given me two very important lessons.
First, it’s forced me to live everything in this book. I wouldn’t be able to perform at the level I do without the tools I’ve learned, so I’ve doubled down on everything I teach. I rarely have to prepare for a speech, because I use these skills every single day. I live them. It’s who I am.
Second, I’ve had to become really clear on my purpose, my identity, my values, and my reasons for doing what I do every day. When you don’t sleep, and you have a very limited amount of energy and focus, you don’t
waste it. You prioritize and get crystal clear about your commitments and why you are making them. All of those choices have led to inexhaustible motivation. That’s what we’ll talk about in this chapter.