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

KILLING ANTS

Dr. Daniel Amen, a clinical neuroscientist, author of the bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and a frequent guest of ours, came home one night after a particularly bad day at the office dealing with suicide risks, angst-ridden teens, and dysfunctional couples to find thousands of ants in his kitchen. “It was gross,” he wrote. “As I started to clean them up, the acronym came to me. I thought of my patients from that day—like my infested kitchen, my patients’ brains were also infested by the negative thoughts that were robbing them of their joy and stealing their happiness. The next day, I brought a can of ant spray to work as a visual aid and have been working diligently ever since to help my patients eradicate their ANTs.”⁶
ANTs are “automatic negative thoughts” and, if you’re like most people, you place limitations on yourself in the form of these thoughts at least some of the time. Maybe you tell yourself that you aren’t smart enough to learn a skill that you’d really like to have. Or perhaps you repeat on an endless loop how pushing yourself to accomplish something is only going to lead to disappointment.
ANTs are everywhere, and there isn’t enough ant spray in the world to get rid of all of them. But eliminating them from your life is an essential part of unlimiting your brain. The reason for this is simple: If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you regularly tell yourself that you can’t do something, or that you’re too old to do something, or that you don’t have the smarts to do something, you won’t do that thing. Only when you move on from this kind of destructive self-talk can you truly accomplish what you want to accomplish.

5. A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT

A 2018 piece in the medical journal The Lancet identified that “air pollution might cause 30 percent of all strokes and thus might be one of the leading contributors of the global stroke burden.” It went on: “Given the strong association between stroke, vascular risk factors, and dementia, the suggested link between air pollution and dementia is to be expected.”⁷ The air you breathe is critical to the way your brain functions. If you’ve ever been stuck in a room with a smoker, you know how hard it is to even think while you’re breathing that toxic air. Conversely, if you’re hiking in the mountains and take a deep breath from the crisp, clean atmosphere, you can feel your senses thriving.
If you live in a factory town or a big city with pollutants everywhere, there isn’t a lot you can do about the air around you. Fortunately, there are devices available to clean the air in your home and in your office, and you can make an increased effort to get to cleaner spaces more frequently.
A clean environment goes beyond air quality. Removing clutter and distractions from your surroundings will make you feel lighter and improve your ability to focus, so take time to Marie Kondo your mind and remove any unnecessary stuff.

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