Fueling your brain is fundamental to becoming limitless, and we have lots more to get to in order to make this happen. But first, let’s stop and focus on a few things from this chapter:
Put a shopping list together for all the brain foods you don’t currently have in your home. I realize that not all of these foods are going to be compatible with your palate, but really try to include as many as you can. Then take this list with you to the store.
Spend some time identifying your ANTs. What limitations are you placing on yourself? Give yourself a few minutes with this. What are you telling yourself you can’t do? Write this down.
Think about how you’d like to expand your learning. What have you always wanted to master that you haven’t found the time to master? Is
it a different language? Computer coding? A new sales or marketing technique? What can you do to fit that into your life right now?
Use one of the tools we talked about here to improve the amount and quality of your sleep. Keep track of this for at least a week.
I made two videos for you on how to easily memorize the top 10 brain foods and my 10 brain energizing recommendations. Go to www.Limit lessBook.com/ resources to watch.
SMALL S I MPLE STEPS
What is the smallest simple step I can take now? How do we start good habits or end bad ones?
Whatdailyroutinewill helpmebecomelimitless?
You have a reason or purpose to do something. You have the necessary energy to do it. What is missing?
A small simple step (S3). The tiniest action you can take to get you closer to your goal. One that requires minimal effort or energy. Over time, these become habits. That’s the reason I’ve filled this book with the small simple steps called Kwik Starts.
Back in the 1920s, a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, was sitting in a Viennese restaurant when she noticed that the waiters swirling around her in the busy eatery were highly efficient at remembering customer orders while they were in process but tended to forget who had what as soon as the orders were filled.
Intrigued by this, she ran a study where she had people perform simple tasks while they were sometimes interrupted. Afterward, she queried participants about which tasks they remembered and which they did not, finding that those who’d been interrupted were twice as likely to remember the things they’d been doing when they’d been interrupted than the things they’d been able to complete without interruption. She came to the conclusion—subsequently known as the Zeigarnik effect—that
uncompleted tasks created a level of tension that keeps that task at the front of our minds until it is completed.
In all likelihood, you’re familiar with this tension from your experience with procrastination. When you have something you know you need to do and you keep putting it off, it weighs on you, even making it more difficult to do anything else well as long as this task goes uncompleted. What you need to do seems hard, or it seems like less fun than the other things you could be doing, or it’s going to be uncomfortable, or you’ve simply convinced yourself that you have plenty of time to get to it later. We still struggle to complete tasks when we are clear on our vision for our lives and know who we want to become. Why is it still so hard to act, even when we have sustained motivation?
One of the most significant reasons that people fail to act is that we feel overwhelmed by what we need to do. A project or a chore might seem so big and time-consuming that you can’t imagine how you’re ever going to get it done. We look at the project in its entirety and immediately feel that the task at hand is too big, so we shut down or put it off. “Incomplete tasks and procrastinating often lead to frequent and unhelpful thought patterns,” says psychologist Hadassah Lipszyc. “These thoughts can impact on sleep, trigger anxiety symptoms, and further impact on a person’s mental and emotional resources.”1
