Seven Billion Ways to Learn Anything – Brain Biology Geek Alert with JW Wilson

YBOP Intro/Outro: 00:00:06

Welcome back to Your Brain On Positive. All the love and support you need is residing inside of you. And we're going to make it easier to turn it on.

Jackie Simmons: 00:00:23

When it comes to intelligent conversation, I don't have to look very far, all I have to do is reach out to JW Wilson. And sometimes it's an intelligence level beyond my vocabulary. And what I love about talking with JW is that he can bring it down to what I can understand and digest. So today, we're talking about the mission to help the world choose to make it a great day. We're talking about the book project, make it a great day, the choice is yours. And we're going to be talking about how a brain really works. What is the science behind suicide behind suicidal actions, suicidal thoughts, what they call suicide, ology, the study of suicide, but also an addiction, a habit of suicidal thinking. All of these are topics that I've explored in my own fashion, taking them into game language and elephants in the room. But let's talk about the science behind what most people are afraid to talk about. So thank you for being here. JW.

JW Wilson: 00:01:48

Glad to be here. Thanks so much.

Jackie Simmons: 00:01:52

What got you started in this whole how the brain really works?

JW Wilson: 00:01:59

Well, you know, it's kind of interesting. I used to be in business development, I started businesses in medical publishing television, different ones. And this is way back in the 80s. I read a guy named Peter Drucker, who said, we're in a knowledge society, I thought to myself, yeah, I'm a business guy, I guess, if we're an unalloyed society, this is in the 80s was a very new philosophy, you know, up until then, we were in an industrial society. And basically, we were manufacturing, we just built stuff, all of a sudden, now we're moving over towards computers and Microsoft and, and those kinds of things. And he came up with a term or an analysis it not an industrial society. And then when I saw that, this is an age, I went, Whoa, what is the number one asset you can have and analysis side. And it's your ability to learn. And so I figured out, you know, just from a business day, if I can accelerate the speed of learning, we're going to make a fortune because we're in analysis. So I went and I went to Harvard, I went to the Salk Institute, I went to MIT, I went and got all the top brains, there were kind of my idea was to put them all in one room, share the information, so we could transform the world. So we can accelerate the speed at which we all basically learn and get new knowledge. What I found was very disheartening. People were afraid to share their research because they didn't want somebody else to steal it if it wasn't ready yet. So there was a lot of protection to what the research was, I was in the 80s, I was very ignorant to all this. And I was really kind of a, I really hurt me. I'm matter of fact, I went away for really, three or four or five months going, what am I going to do now? Well, the oh, what I ended up doing was learning it myself. You know. So yeah, cuz the more I did research, I found out about it. And the NEC, it was really weird. I really enjoyed it. I mean, you know, I'd been a rugby player, and I built TV stations, all this other crap, I wasn't really a scientist. But every moment I loved of it, because it was discovered, in a way it was like developing new businesses, for me. And I will explain later on when your dopamine is high enough, your engagement is through the roof. And for me, learning just drove for me my engagement through the roof. And so basically, it took us almost 35 years to reverse engineer, the 6000 genes to control brain function. And when you understand the 6000 genes and what needs to happen to turn them on, so they expressed the proteins and enzymes that change the shape of the brain, which is learning, then you can accelerate learning behavior, change, motivation, all sorts of things dramatically, because you understand the underlying mechanism of what you need to change.

Jackie Simmons: 00:04:47

All right, I'm gonna unpack that and translate it for my brain. Okay, so here's my brain on positive. I am absolutely positive that I understood every word that you said and And I want to make sure that I grasp the meaning of it. When you said changing the brain actually changes the shape of the brain, I get that learning can change the shape of the brain, because I know that the brain continues to build out new matter, as we learn new things over the course of our life, it doesn't ever get fixed, like they used to think. What I didn't know is that there are 6000 genes, managing all of this. Well, what I did though, as that when were born, learning in and of itself, releases, the feel good chemicals, fun, is the natural reward system in the brain for learning something new.

Jackie Simmons: 00:05:45

It's fun to learn and change.

JW Wilson: 00:05:50

We've kind of run learning, because you're gonna get an A, a B, a C, you're going to flunk Did you do your homework? Did you memorize this stuff? Right? We smart as Polly is, what we've done is we've taken a wonderful, beautiful, natural thing that God nature has programmed us to learn very naturally and easily. And we've turned it into a horrific, horrific task that most of us would rather not do. Nobody wants nobody leaves school and says, can't wait to go out and memorize 1000 things in the next year. I had so much fun last year, memorizing all that. Nobody does that.

Jackie Simmons: 00:06:28

Very few, very few people have an easy time memorizing anything, because that's not learning. That's like trying to program a computer

JW Wilson: 00:06:36

will there for 5% of the population and 95% of those people are teachers. Memorization is a very No, it's true. It's a very easy task. So what teachers in education do is they take their brain when they did when I talked to teachers, and I say who did well in school, you know what percent raise their hand?

Jackie Simmons: 00:06:55

Well, based on what you just said, I guess 95% of

JW Wilson: 00:06:58

exactly 95 and the 5% that don't, are phys ed teachers and physics teachers Phys Ed is about the body and physics of is about really the spatial parietal lobe, which is putting things together in time and space, which most learning is linguistic or mathematical that we have in the school system, which is left temporal lobe function. So what we've done is we've created a system for the people that built the system, not for the people that are in this system. Therefore, because the system is not efficient, it creates that inefficiency in an incredibly high level. And that's why 75% of us live paycheck to paycheck, and 66% of us aren't happy with our lives. Our education system taught us how to be miserable, and inefficient and poor. And we need to recognize this.

Jackie Simmons: 00:07:49

All right, that's a heck of an indictment of the education system. And I get it. I am not indicted.

JW Wilson: 00:07:56

I'm just having an SEC clarity about what happens if we continue on with it.

Jackie Simmons: 00:08:02

All right. So we're gonna call this an observable phenomenon. Because those statistics are real. It's just an observation, not a judgment. Now, if somebody is okay with 75% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and 60%, of American being unhappy, there's nothing here to address. If on the other hand, you're not satisfied with the fact that only 25% of our countrymen of the people who live in America are less stressed about money, they're not living paycheck to paycheck, that's only your one out of four people. Three out of four people are worried about money incessant Lee, and that trace the brain, that's one of the things I figured out is that worry actually causes the brain to contract the same way that the high levels of stress does. So the fact that we're not happy. I think the fact that there's only 66% that are unhappy is a pretty much an amazing statistic.

JW Wilson: 00:09:05

So let's come back to your suicide stuff. We'll get back to kids in a second. But even if you're an adult, you've gone to school, you've done your, you know, if you get through high school, you did your 12 you went through college, you did your 16 if you got your doctorate or master's, it may be more. Now you've got this, you're out there working, you're not happy, you're not making the money you want. Literally the neurotransmitters of joy depress. They're not being expressed. So dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, the thing that makes me relaxed GABA, none of them are being expressed. So I'm very nervous. We call it a wall. I'm trying to make money. The problem is when you're under stress learning goes down, not up. So what happens is we've got all these people that are trying to change their life. They're not making enough money. They're not happy. They're under high levels of stress. their adrenal gland gives off a hormone called cortisol, in literally shifts shifts the blood flow from the part of the brain that lets them think themselves out of the situation, they're in

Jackie Simmons: 00:10:12

some way. So here's my graphic, I say that it pulls the blood into the center of the brain into the limbic brain into where all of the high trigger emotions, the fight or flight response is there. And it pulls it away from the higher functioning parts of the brain where reasoning and perception and even vocabulary language exists easily. So that's

JW Wilson: 00:10:39

right, and this is what happens with children that are thinking about suicide, you got to understand you get 20 watts of power through your carotid and vertebral artery that's going to your brain and it's allowing, and it tends to shift where that energy goes, shifts to where your focus is. Now, we don't need to necessarily get into why a child is thinking about suicide. But if they're thinking about suicide, the neuro chemistry of that is low dopamine, which is low meaning low serotonin, which is low relationship, low GABA, which is, which is relaxation, and joy. And there's endorphins tied into that also, all these things are very tied together. So what happens is, when we see a child that is going through it, or we want to get them out of a suicidal episode, or get them never to go into it, if we don't understand the neurobiology of what is missing in their brain, we don't know what to put into their brain help them get more of so we can get them out of their crisis.

Jackie Simmons: 00:11:42

I got an idea. Okay, let's see if we can figure out a way to explain this without anyone needing to understand biochemistry or neuroscience. What if, instead of what's the problem with with when your brain is in a funk? And all of these chemicals are missing? Let's go with a time machine and take somebody back to before the funk started, right? What are the

Jackie Simmons: 00:12:15

activities, what are the

JW Wilson: 00:12:18

events, so let's go back to birth. So what some, some people are going to be born with a lower level already of dopamine, these are called mono, Amiens, these neurotransmitters have joy and meaning they're going to be born with it. Other people are going to be reborn with a fine system that doesn't need any tweaking, but they're going to be born into an environment that does not allow the system the system to develop efficiently. So everything one person, they may have some damage coming out of the womb that we have to deal with. These are more, you know, you're born with it with a dysfunction or a minimization of a certain neurochemical. But then you can also live a life where the environment can cause the dysfunction in your neurochemical system. Okay,

Jackie Simmons: 00:13:06

so your your thermostat for joy and happiness and meaning can be set at birth. Come you come in with a setting. So you've got a setting when you're born. And as you live with the environment that you're in, they say children learn what they live, you know, the environment that you're in can also set the thermostat either way, up or down. All right,

JW Wilson: 00:13:30

that sounds good to get analogy. Very good analogy. Yes. All right.

Jackie Simmons: 00:13:33

So I stole it from the book flow, you don't have to read that book to actually get one concept. Well, good. Now a lot of people can't get past trying to pronounce the gentleman's last name was one of those. So what I do? Well, you got further than I did. So the power of the analogy is that we, we have thermostats in our home. So if we have a range of say, between 40 and 60 points that this is our normal, we get below 40, something kicks in in our brain to get us back up to 40. We get above 60, something else kicks in in our brain to bring us down below 60. And this analogy was taught to me in terms of money, that people have a certain range of where they're comfortable with money, and unless they do something to stretch it. So like somebody who hits the lottery, they get pushed up above their comfort zone, and then they brain kicks them back down unless they take action.

JW Wilson: 00:14:37

That's where all those lottery guys win a million and $10 million, and they're all broken six years.

Jackie Simmons: 00:14:42

Yeah. I mean, the statistics, the observable phenomenon is they're being able to understand it. Now that we have a basic understanding of how a set point works. And when we're talking about learning, the set point that matters is joy and meaning.

JW Wilson: 00:14:58

Yeah, really, but we've turned it in into something that it is, and we've turned it into, Oh, you've got to get an A, you got to get a diploma you, it's all these goddess, we've taken the joy out of learning, throw it in all those goddes. So that most of us when we finish school, we never want to go back.

Jackie Simmons: 00:15:14

It's a it's an interesting phenomenon. What we're talking about and describing is that even a kid who comes in with a pretty high setpoint for joy and meaning, they are exploring and finding meaning and joy in the learning, and then they go to school, and that whole system can be brought down to a lower setpoint by the Goddess.

JW Wilson: 00:15:38

That's exactly you hit that's perfect. And so, so here's what happens. I come in my life is so good. You know, I'm born up until I get into first grade, I'm running around, I'm eatin dirt, you know, I'm playing with, I'm playing with toys, I'm just having a blast, you know, I'm on fire most of the time, or I'm asleep or something, you know, life's wonderful. Why? Because I have, by the time you're about seven, you've got about 15,000 connections per neuron. Do you know how many you have right now know already 5000 connections, so you lose about oh, thirds of them as you age. So what a child is doing. And this is what we do when we restrict the child's movement, or their ability to go out into the real world. What happens is we are wired to fire up those 15,000 connections per neuron with as much energy and as much joy and as much diversity as possible. So we can figure out who we are. When we limit the amount of of information that our biology is able to be activated with. We limit who we are. So when we come back to it now, when you're when you're seven years old, you're starting with about 15,000 connections per neuron, that I can put you anywhere, literally, I put you in France, and I don't have to teach you French, you're going to learn French because part of those 15,000 connections are neurons that let you speak French for that and accent. They're already pre programmed in there. All I got to do is expose you to it. But what do we do we teach them language in high school, when all those receptor sites have gone away to speak all the languages in the world. So we have an educational system that doesn't like non understanding neurobiology creates its own stress. So for children, when they come in, they've got 15,000 connections per neuron, give them things that are wire that up, not things that are going to restrict those from wiring it up. And when we lock somebody in a box away from the real world, we limit the ability of that, that new unit, that brain of theirs, to to wire up effectively to live in the real world, they wire up to live in the classroom.

Jackie Simmons: 00:17:53

So translation, lock a kid in a box, is your way of describing a traditional United States of America, elementary school,

JW Wilson: 00:18:07

elementary school everywhere.

Jackie Simmons: 00:18:10

Well, I am just I want to make sure that this is because that is certainly not an analogy that most people would attach to an education system. We've had open classrooms, you know, they they have revamped the education system several times in my lifetime. And not one time, did they ever talk about it being locked in a box. So I want to be really clear that you're not talking about locking kids in a physical environment in a box, you're talking about emotionally, socially, environmentally, limiting their exposure to the diversity of the world to what's real,

JW Wilson: 00:18:51

and physically to, they're in a box, whether it's a little box, or a big box, schools, the big box classroom, the little box, we're locking them away from the real world. And when that happens, all you got to do is look at what happens when you lock a bunch of people up that have different visions, different ideas up in small boxes, and you got prison and they end up killing each other. It's not good what we're doing. Biologically, we're not looking at this effect. I'm not against the education system. I'm for the education system. But I'm for an education system that understands the neurobiology of how we learn and change our behaviors and learn to love one another.

Jackie Simmons: 00:19:29

You just described something that gave me chills because I'm thinking about your analogy of the prison system, locking a bunch of people together who don't have anything, any meaning around being together as matter of fact, they have meaning around the fact that I don't belong here you do kind of environment, and then they end up in a hostile situation with each other as you said they kill each other. And I'm going Holy crap, we started Are kids in school the ages to six and seven? And by the time they get to middle school, what are they doing emotionally hostile to each other. I just went to a fitness center, and they've got a no Mean Girls rule at the fitness center for grownups because Mean Girls is a thing in our world.

JW Wilson: 00:20:22

And that's what I see what happens is when your biology is not happy you act out. It's as simple as that. And why isn't your biology happy in school? Because I mean, in the education system, who does really well in memorization and linear math, and in language, which is left Trump alone, mainly function, I see. This is the way it should be. I forced everybody through it. But 95% don't go through that sieve. So they end up in pain one way or another, then what they do is, they look at somebody to blame. That's what we do. And what we don't blame the education system. We blame ourselves.

Jackie Simmons: 00:21:05

Well, that is what I call the classic lie of our time, is that children, viscerally God level cannot make the adults who are responsible for taking care of them, we can't make the adult wrong, because a baby is born knowing if you leave me I will die. So we emotionally cannot assign wrong to the very people who we are dependent on this day saying the child begins to believe the lie, there must be something wrong with me. And most kids already have had that experience before they hit school. And what you're saying is that in school, this is just reinforced over and over and over again. JW et I call that the human hole puncher, because every time a kid's brain comes up with a science of meaning, there must be something wrong with me, it's almost like you poked a hole in their soul,

JW Wilson: 00:22:02

and you're gonna get an F or a D or a C, they feel that way. I know, because I was the F and the D student.

Jackie Simmons: 00:22:10

It's the biggest conundrum of our age that we are raising. And we have been for a while raising kids to believe that they're broken.

JW Wilson: 00:22:24

We've raised them to fit the school system, not the real world in the school system doesn't work.

Jackie Simmons: 00:22:30

Well, in the real world has some challenges, too. So

JW Wilson: 00:22:34

yeah, but you can't you can't throw kids into a frickin program that trains them to be terrible when they get out. To be not successful, to be poor, to be unhappy. That's what we've created. And we better wake up and pay attention to it because well, because we're not paying attention to it. What happens is when you start brand new people A, B, C, D, and F, we learn how to be see yourselves as separate, not as together. And then we see ourselves as Democrats or Republicans, or we see ourselves as a, you know, a Trump Republican or somebody else or somebody else, a Romney, robot, whatever, we end up separating ourselves. So the system itself is creating the dysfunction, our education system is helping create the dysfunction we have in our world. And if we don't wake up to it, we're going to continue to get it. Because there's nothing wrong with those F students, except for their brain didn't fit the system. And we blame them for not putting in enough effort has not had Usually it has nothing to do with effort. Who wants to put effort into a system that doesn't work? Have you

Jackie Simmons: 00:23:37

ever heard the story of the animal school?

JW Wilson: 00:23:42

Tell me I know I have sounds so familiar.

Jackie Simmons: 00:23:46

The animals were excited in the meadow, all of the deer and the rabbits and all of the animals because they were getting a school teacher, their kids were going to be able to go to school. And so the rabbit family, their son was going to be the first rabbit to go to school. And he loves school. He raced there every day. And he was doing okay in some of his classes. But I remember he was doing really well in some of them. And then he got to the swimming class. And they tossed him into the water and he sank like a rock his forgot wet and down he went and the coach hauled him out, sat him on the side said don't worry, you'll get better at with some practice, you'll be fine. Now of course the class he loved the most was the running class. And there his coach encouraged him and said you we can make you even faster and you'll be able to do and the kid was starting to have this kind of love hate relationship with school because the swimming class filled him with dread. He didn't even want to get up and go to school on the days that he knew he was going to be dunked in the water. And so he has a cut chat the principal's like, you know, hey, you're flunking out of swimming. We want to try to do something to help you. So here's what we figured out, we figured out that since you're doing really, really well in running, you don't need as much time and running. And so we're going to take time away from the running class, so that you have extra time with the coach and the swimming class.

Jackie Simmons: 00:25:12

How does that sound and he didn't want to go to school anymore. And he couldn't explain to his parents how painful it was that they were trying to teach him something that he physically could not do. And I think that that's the best analogy I've ever heard for what you just described about what we're doing to our kids, every single day, hour, every

JW Wilson: 00:25:41

click, they spend 45 minutes, if your brain doesn't fit that room, you're miserable for 45 minutes in that room, then I'm going to stick you for 45 minutes in that room and be miserable. And then when you through those seven classes are being miserable, I'm gonna send you home and make you do homework that doesn't fit your brain plan. So you get to be miserable another two hours, no wonder people are committing suicide.

Jackie Simmons: 00:26:03

The challenge about this is just in the sheer numbers, the sheer numbers 95% of our kids are in classes that they cannot biologically pass and succeed at, they can pass but not thrive. They can be in pain and make it through we are teaching our kids to be long suffering. And when a kid starts assigning a meaning of suffering to their day to day activities, their brain can go into what I call the negative echo chamber. And this is what we've learned through having the talks that save lives is that

Jackie Simmons: 00:26:45

they don't talk about when these

Jackie Simmons: 00:26:47

thoughts start taking hold that life is just too painful to live. It's

Jackie Simmons: 00:26:51

not that they want to die. They don't want to die. They just find the living more painful than they can handle.

JW Wilson: 00:27:01

That's exactly right. And so and here's what we need to understand is we're adding to their pain, when we have a child doesn't fit the school system and then we beat him up because he's not getting the better grades. What we're doing is we're lowering his dopamine lowering his serotonin Lorna's norepinephrine, making them be more specific in neuro chemistry of suicide, there's a chemistry to suicide, when your endorphins in the air Jack through the roof, and you're as happy as a clam, and you got high GABA, and you're relaxed, you're not gonna stick a gun in your mouth. When all those things are low, you're gonna stick a gun in your mouth, because life sucks.

Jackie Simmons: 00:27:39

And you cannot, at that moment, see any other options. I'm a firm believer that people take their own lives because it seems like the best idea, the only idea at the time,

JW Wilson: 00:27:52

let me explain what happens. So what happens neuro biologically, let's go back to this stress hormone. Now we're not dealing with a child who was born, we're dealing with some issues, we're dealing with the child that the environment helped create the issues, right? So it's a high stress environment, one where he's not maybe acknowledged as much one where he's had difficulty in either school or athletics or somewhere else, and hasn't got the support to figure out it's not that friggin important anyway, right there, he's made it the most important thing in his life. And he's not getting in whether it's girls or sports or academics or whatever. So what they've done is they've taken a position, which is created a way to see the world, but the way they're seeing the world is reducing their neuro chemistry. So what our job to do from my world is we got to Jack their neuro chemistry up, so they get the neuro chemistry of joy, happiness, fulfillment, and meaning.

Jackie Simmons: 00:28:46

All right, let's start right here, right now. What's one thing that someone can do to improve the odds of their kid's brain having enough of these chemicals that they won't see? Yeah, lucky is being a present life in a box,

JW Wilson: 00:29:03

right? So when we think about this, your child is seven years old, they they enter first grade from first grade until 12th grade, everybody's going to tell them what to do and what's meaningful to them. What we don't do is we don't talk to a seven year old and go Bobby, Alice, you know what your seven years old? What is most meaningful to you in your life right now, at this moment on the future? What gives you joy, what gives you happiness? What gives you fulfillment? And you can have these discussions with seven years old, that will tell you and that is

Jackie Simmons: 00:29:34

your right? I can ask 100 adults, what do you want and one out of 100 will be able to give me an immediate answer I can ask 104 year olds, what do you want and all of them can tell me

JW Wilson: 00:29:46

exactly and then when we do we call it wrapping at the Institute at the learning code Institute. We take with the we first of all, we do what we call peel the amygdala. The amygdala is where your emotional center is right? So we have them simulate Let's say that I'm talking to Clint, and he says race cars are important. And then I say, Why are race cars? Because I want to be a racecar driver. Why do you want to be erased, you got to keep peeling the onion. Because if you don't understand emotionally, what's driving him, you can't lead the parade, you're going to be following if you're a teacher, or a parent, if you don't understand what's driving them, and you think you can drive them, you're going to make them miserable, because you're going to drive them into the wrong corral. That doesn't make them happy. And all you got to do is look at all of us. And we got most of us got driven into the wrong corral. So you need to ask the child, what is most meaningful to you at this moment in your life? What gives you the most joy, the most happiness, the most fulfillment? And then your only job, let's say the kid says racecar says, If you want to be a really good racecar driver, you know what you really need to know a little bit about geometry. You know why? Because when you go around that corner, 220 miles an hour, and the road isn't bank, blah, blah, blah. Now you're talking about what's meaningful, that child, you're wrapping what they need to learn into it, their neuro chemistry immediately jumps in and solves the problem. It's natural. It's what we do, but we make it so unnatural. We force children to learn what isn't meaningful to us. It goes in one ear and literally dribbles out the other, it does not stick, meaning makes everything stick. So the minute you go into a child and find out what's meaningful to them at a young age, and keep giving it to them, holy moly, their lives literally change. And it's simple.

Jackie Simmons: 00:31:29

It's simple. All right. So I came out a different way. And I'm going to tell you what I did. And then you'll tell me, how do we wrap these two things together? Okay. Okay. I came up with a pattern interrupt, because of the high rate of suicide attempts, especially among kids. And my pattern interrupt is a workbook. It's called the why not workbook. And you talked about asking a question over and over again, you to peel back the amygdala? Well, I didn't know that's what I was doing. But I might have hit on it by accident. The question I have people answer is, Why not kill yourself today?

Jackie Simmons: 00:32:09

Great. And then I asked, Why not kill yourself today? And the first answers can be really snarky, really smart aleck II, yo. But by the time we get down because I asked seven times, and by the time we get to six or seven, they are telling me what's meaningful to them without me asking what's meaningful?

JW Wilson: 00:32:33

That's exactly right. Same, same thing. We're doing a different direction. But yeah, once you start peeling the amygdala, they start, then they become aware of what they weren't, for some reason either weren't allowed to, or we didn't have this system. We're all running around unaware,

Jackie Simmons: 00:32:48

Jackie, that there are so many old movies that hit upon this over and over and over. Oh, shoot, Jimmy Stewart did a movie you can't take it with you.

JW Wilson: 00:33:02

Does the show know what Jimmy Stewart was? Oh, I

Jackie Simmons: 00:33:05

hope so. I hope so. I mean, it's a classic movie. Yeah, there's a scene where a guy's at work, you know, tapping numbers into an adding machine and pulling the lever. And and this the man who's the protagonist in the movie, he's like, Yeah, what do you like to do? Yeah. And it shocks the this gentleman who's been pulling these levers and pushing these numbers so much that he makes the first mistake in 35 years of the job. And he's looking around and in the knees, like he picks up something from underneath his cubby and shows him and it's a little thing that he made up this little bunny rabbit and all the people start coming over because it makes noise and yeah, and it's cute. And then the boss comes out. And everybody scatters.

Jackie Simmons: 00:33:50

And they the guy's

Jackie Simmons: 00:33:51

like, you know, Hey, you want to come to my house where you can make more things up instead of stay in here. And he's like, oh, and he was out of there. Yeah, it was it as soon as he realized there might be an environment that would support his life having some meaning where he could do what brought him joy.

JW Wilson: 00:34:09

He was on structure in our head. But nobody has gone in there to help us figure it out.

Jackie Simmons: 00:34:15

There are smart people who know these things. And they've been trying to get the message across using movies, using music using comic books. Because changing our business structure, changing our educational structure, those are really large organizations and just like trying to turn the Titanic, it's hard to get that to move on

JW Wilson: 00:34:42

my experience. That's not my experience, Jackie, no good.

Jackie Simmons: 00:34:45

Give me something happier than that. Because from my mom, I got this.

JW Wilson: 00:34:50

Here's my experience and I talked to some, you know, big organizations and universities and that kind of stuff. The minute people understand the neuro Biology. It just makes it simple. We're not talking about I'm right, you're wrong. The reason there's freaking 1400 footnotes in this, this book of mine is book is because I wanted to make it bulletproof. So people would apply to the science, not their opinion. And what it allows them to do when they use the sciences, they don't have to be right. They don't have to protect a position. All they say is, this is what the science says, This is what we should be doing.

Jackie Simmons: 00:35:29

Are they changing what they're doing?

JW Wilson: 00:35:32

Right away? We got no problem. Okay, then.

JW Wilson: 00:35:38

No problem. Once people, once people understand 1/10 Of this, they don't go back to doing it the old way again.

Jackie Simmons: 00:35:46

So once people understand, how do we help, I'm going to I'm going to call I'm learning the elephant in the room. Because we both know that you talking to one person and me talking to one person is not moving fast enough to save a generation.

Jackie Simmons: 00:36:07

So what would help JW? What would help more people

JW Wilson: 00:36:12

and we're getting really simplistic here. We just say science is the answer quick coming up with your own frickin opinions. Don't look at Freud, you can look at Freud, but look at him through science, don't look at Jung, but look at him through science. Look at the things that are out there through science, look at what we're doing to people's brains and their physiology. It's not just our brains, our education systems are affecting, it's affecting our heart rate, our blood pressure, the fat in our body is there's a lot of things that we're doing when we put ourselves under stress in the education system for 14 years, then ends up causing health functions later on. So basically, what we all we really need to do is understand the neurobiology of learning, we maintain and you fix the problems.

Jackie Simmons: 00:36:59

I get that that fixes the problems. And my question is, and maybe we can come up with an answer for it here. I wonder what would happen. If we went to a school system and ask the question, why not keep the education system exactly the way it is? And we let them starting to argue for why it needs to change.

JW Wilson: 00:37:24

I don't have time for that. Well, you

Jackie Simmons: 00:37:26

can't Okay, because my mom was in education. She was a special ed supervisor. Getting any innovation through

JW Wilson: 00:37:35

the Don't, don't do don't go. Don't go against the but don't go against the fortress. All right. So

Jackie Simmons: 00:37:42

then where do we go with this,

JW Wilson: 00:37:44

we're going on launchy to a billion homeschool parents cracking the learning code for homeschool parents, a billion of them in three weeks, you start at the bottom, and that's the way you move the top. The top is too engrained with people certain words what

Jackie Simmons: 00:37:59

I was talking about, you're like, No, it's easy. And I'm like, It's easy.

JW Wilson: 00:38:03

It's easy. It's easy, not the top down.

Jackie Simmons: 00:38:06

It's easy. If you don't try to change the institution, which is what I was talking about. You're talking about Jamie the same thing. Yeah. Okay, so now we're saying are just like fighting with you? I know if you do. Yeah, I am a profitably provoking person, I provoke my clients, I'd make more profits, and so do they. So everybody loves us, and you love to provoke me and bait me I have finally figured this out. And I let you I do. It's like, Ah, I know better. Okay. So here we go. Let's have some workload with this. Because this is a lot of fun. The idea that we will be able to impact the next generation sooner, the ability for kids to start getting this now this is my bandwagon. It's why make it a great day. The choice is yours was even published in the first place. And it's what I do all day long. I want to be part of this empowerment revolution, where it's not that anybody empowers me, I think empowerment is an inside job. And parents are the only ones who can change this conversation.

JW Wilson: 00:39:15

Yeah, I mean, we definitely have to get the parents, they have to understand that what they here's what we do we blame our kids. Oh, we got an F He doesn't study hard enough. No, he got an F because the frickin room he was in drove him crazy can't stand being in there.

Jackie Simmons: 00:39:30

And parents don't know what they don't know JW when, when at when we had this whole initiative here locally on grade level reading. And what they did was get around the part of our parents brain where the parent felt inadequate to help their kids read because the parents couldn't read. Alright. And so they showed the parents how all they have to do is take a book and read have their eyes from left to right. And just draw that with it and tell the kid any story they want. But pretend that they're reading it so that the kids eyes learn to track from left to right. And the low reading level of the kids started going up, just because of the muscle coordination at the bottom is the biology. Well, finding the biological hats, or we'll just go ahead and use the new age word. The shortcuts by any other name is what your company is all about? How do we keep the easy ways the shortcuts to keep the biology engaged in learning and meaning and joy?

JW Wilson: 00:40:40

We don't really see it as shortcuts, we just see it as the way you learn, you might as well, you might as well go into the process. You know, we're, I'm not trying to monetize this stuff. We're trying to change the world. And so what happens is, yeah, I can, you know, I built businesses and I was in, I worked on Madison Avenue, I could sell anything. But that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to transform the way people look at what they're trying to accomplish. So they take a more holistic approach of what needs to change and transform. My experience has been if I can say, I can develop a program, it says, Your child will get all A's if you take this program, and I'll make a million dollars in a year, even if it sucks, because I know what to say with the ad copy. Right? So but that's not what we're trying to do, what we really want to do is we want to change the foundational structure of how we how we look at learning as a species. So we now can develop systems not only in education, but in corporate corporate training doesn't work either. I was trying to we lost off, it's our nightmare in there, I think it's a billion dollars, it's a mess.

Jackie Simmons: 00:41:50

It's a huge money engine is so is the weight loss industry for exactly the same reason. They're not applying biology, they are applying emotionality and manipulation. And so we know that marketing is a manipulation of emotion, and it can be done in service to people and it can be done in service to somebody budget, excuse me, I'm sorry, this should have been no worries, you just go right ahead and take care of what you need to take care of. In the meantime, what I'm

Jackie Simmons: 00:42:22

wondering,

Jackie Simmons: 00:42:24

is changing the meaning for parents, because sending my kids to school, the meaning behind that was based on a trust that the school system was going to equip my kid to succeed, and to be at functioning, contributing adult member

Jackie Simmons: 00:42:43

of society, just like you, yes, like me,

JW Wilson: 00:42:48

who's dysfunctional than not working that? Well, most parents? Look, this parents are living paycheck to paycheck, the parents aren't very happy. So we got them making decisions for our kids. It's hard to make decisions for your kids, when you're under stress, and your dad focus, he tried to stay alive, you can't even pay attention to your kid. So

Jackie Simmons: 00:43:09

that's where I want to go. And this is where I think we're going to have the biggest impact in the world. As you focus on who is paying attention to you, and you work with the homeschooling moms, and you focus in that direction. I'm going to take this into my world of the elephants in the room into the entrepreneurial space, because it is the entrepreneurs of today that are creating the training programs. Yeah. And so we can influence this. I don't

JW Wilson: 00:43:38

know if you know this, I've got a I think it was Dartmouth or I'm not sure Cornell one of them. But you know, a lot of times these aren't these universities are putting their online courses online so people can have them. And there was one on and I may have the title wrong, but it was like ancient Greek history. 12,500 people signed up for it. This is from a Ivy League college. After six weeks, you know how many people were finished? 200. Why? Because they were all excited about you know, the reason they want to take the course they were interested in the subject. Then they had to look at it on their television. I mean, on their computer, or guys sitting there talking for 45 minutes, three times a week. And after two weeks they fell asleep.

Jackie Simmons: 00:44:28

Oh yeah, that's not how we learn. I'm an experiential learner. But we

JW Wilson: 00:44:33

keep putting more online courses up there that people memorize and watch things for hours. It's like literally we intel we go and I want to get into how we we are changing online learning forever. With this new program. People need to spend no more than seven, three to seven minutes a day on average. Some of them are 15 minutes on that three to seven minutes a day three times a week when they finish this. Literally not only did Are they able to Get it, they get a certificate in learning from Claremont University and the neurobiology of learning. But they've also not only learned how to help their children learn, but they've also had to help other people in their lives learn. Because we don't keep doing the things that are working.

Jackie Simmons: 00:45:15

Alright, now I'm gonna ask about naming the elephant in the room, I'm gonna be on my computer learning this seven minutes, maybe 15 minutes three times a week. What else do by doing in between those classes?

JW Wilson: 00:45:29

Really, you don't have to do anything. These aren't classes. All right, well,

Jackie Simmons: 00:45:33

all right words, we're gonna we're gonna call them these learning experiences, right?

JW Wilson: 00:45:38

So what happens is we have them look at their own lives, their child's lives in what is learning from a different perspective. And then we allow them to start using that new perspective in their life that day with their child, it may only take three minutes. And in literally, they see and here's the problem we want everybody to get, why don't diets work? Because we tell the guy to go on a diet for three months, he does go on the diet, he loses the weight, and then what happens he gains it back. So basically, we don't want to have that thing. We want to have structural change in that child and the parent that's, that stays changed. So we need to start at a young age with them to do this. But more importantly, what we need to do is not forced them to do with the education system is doing. There's no memorization, there's no repetition, there is no true and false test. This is just real world activities, you do take three to seven minutes a day, three or four times a week and do and literally you'll start seeing the world differently. Yeah, it sounds like it's not possible.

Jackie Simmons: 00:46:41

No, I'm loving, I am absolutely loving this. Because you know, if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. So this is a unique approach. It's really super simple, really super fast. And there was something that you said, and I'm going where did it go? The thought the thought this I'm climbing for it right now. I'll catch it. Give me just second.

JW Wilson: 00:47:02

Let me just explain. So this thing when you're in the real world, so what we've done is, we've made the mistake, that thinking inflammation causes transformation. If inflammation caused transformation, nobody be fat. We all know too many calories make us fat, yet we're all still too Oh, 70% of us are overweight. And we all know the information did nothing. So same thing with alcoholics with drug addicts, the information that the drug is killing you is going to do no good at all. If we don't change the neural structures, we don't get change. So the information is not a way to transformation. The second why not, because three other things have to happen there's, we have a thing, it's called the cycle of transformation, which you can find you can find around I think you can find on the website, but it's also in the book, and the ebooks only four bucks or something. So basically what this the cycle of transformation is, it's information first, when you were a child, your mom said to you, you know, Jackie, the stove is hot. That's inflammation. What did you do?

Jackie Simmons: 00:48:09

Whenever I texted

JW Wilson: 00:48:10

da? I mean, it's because we don't know what hot means. Exactly. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna wander over there. It's so the words did nothing to get you not curious. Yeah. And if your parent would have beat you, you might not touch that again. But anyway, so you touch the stove, and then what happened. So you, you get burned, you got feedback. So without action. And without feedback, there is literally no learning act without those two stages that are three stages information, the stove is hot, I touch the stove action, I burned my finger, I get feedback. That's how we learn. If you're not allowing people to go in the real world and get those three things you're messing them up. But there's one last thing. So the cycle of transformation have four stages, information action, feedback, but then the most important is incubation. Those first three stages are those those neurotransmitters I talked about before dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, they help us focus to help us pack working memory, long term memories behind your temper. Those first three stages information action and feedback are all in working memory function. How do I get the memory back behind my temple or structural changes where it lasts forever, my brain literally has to go offline. It literally has to go it goes away and then acetylcholine and other neurotransmitter comes in when you start to relax. It allows the the neural structures that started in working memory and being very over simplified to select into long term memory and it never goes away.

Jackie Simmons: 00:49:49

Could why we remember things that right

JW Wilson: 00:49:53

you remember your first kiss and not your last history class. Yeah, you might have had more than one first kiss, you know, you had a lot of boyfriends. Right? Well,

Jackie Simmons: 00:50:04

well, I let's not even go there. Okay, I remembered what it was. I wanted to say now that thanks a lot.

JW Wilson: 00:50:10

So let me just finish this last part.

Jackie Simmons: 00:50:13

The last part, then I get my say, we got to wrap it up,

JW Wilson: 00:50:16

if you don't allow yourself to go through the four stages, information, action, feedback, and then offline incubation, literally, you corrupt the learning process. And the educational system has no incubation period. It's all more and more and more memorized. And it's all stuck in the information stage. So we've dropped out the three most vital stages of create learning in the education why

Unknown: 00:50:39

they got it started. Yeah, well,

Jackie Simmons: 00:50:41

I mean, yeah, they get started, they give us lots of information, sort of like stuffing a turkey at Thanksgiving.

JW Wilson: 00:50:49

Okay. That's where I felt a lot of times and some of those classes

Jackie Simmons: 00:50:54

of Turkey. All right, you were talking a minute ago, and I'm just I love the cycle of transformation. Okay, this is not lost on me, because it's absolutely true. Right? Information and knowledge are two different things. And you're talking about this process, that information actually becomes knowledge, it becomes something that is permanently embedded. When you physical structures

JW Wilson: 00:51:16

within your brain. If knowledge is not physical structure in your brain, you cannot remember it. Right? It's just information. They won't even you won't even know it's there. Yeah. Without structural change, there's no memory.

Jackie Simmons: 00:51:30

So understanding that the power, I think, in this conversation for me, was in this division between the education system and the world world. So I've got a question for you.

Jackie Simmons: 00:51:45

In the real world,

Jackie Simmons: 00:51:47

how important is it to work in cooperation with other people to work in teams?

JW Wilson: 00:51:53

Well see the species is a bell curve. There's, there's over here, I'm working with anybody. Einstein basically worked with his wife and a few other people. And there's people, you know, here, where you got at the other end, where you got Steve Jobs, and everybody in Apple was trying to contribute at some level, though there is a bell curve, and our biology throws us into this curve. So we're, it's so in other words, you have to understand that everybody's not going to behave the way you want them to. Everybody's going to behave based on their initial bile.

Jackie Simmons: 00:52:28

That wasn't my question. You're answering a different question. My question was not how do you make teams work better? My question was, as an as an adult in the working world, how important is it too, for there to be cooperation period DAC, with the word team that threw you off? How I mean, we, how important is it that we cooperate with each other?

JW Wilson: 00:52:52

If we don't cooperate? We're

Jackie Simmons: 00:52:54

die. Okay, yeah, we're

JW Wilson: 00:52:56

born with genes that, that support us to cooperate, that we live in cities or trucks, we don't live alone.

Jackie Simmons: 00:53:04

All right. Here's what I got.

Jackie Simmons: 00:53:09

There's a joke. In school, it was told to me by my 93 year old friend, when she was in high school, they would walk into their history classroom to take a test, all chanting, cooperation is the basis of success. Because what would happen in the testing room, they were not allowed to cooperate, they were not allowed to share information, they were not allowed to help each other, the school system, train that out of them to the point that in high school, it was a joke. And then they come out into the real world where if they cannot cooperate, they will die.

JW Wilson: 00:53:42

That's exactly right. It's it. If you can't make yourself part of the species and add value to it, the history of those individuals has been they don't survive.

Unknown: 00:53:54

So

Jackie Simmons: 00:53:55

we've got a solid connection now, between parents you've been talking about and survival of the species. It's my turn to talk, that we have a solid connection in this moment, I'm not gonna let you clutter it. We've got a solid connection in this moment, between the education system, and the tendency of kids to feel so alone, that they can no longer figure out how to live and so they choose to take their own lives and die. That's the connection that just got made. And from that point of view, you have flipped this whole conversation on its head and said, But wait, it doesn't have to be this way. And the solution is simple. It does not require a change at an institutional level. It just requires an embracing of something so simple and so easy, that the biggest challenge you're going to face is the same challenge that I faced with the things that I've created,

Jackie Simmons: 00:55:03

we've been taught that the more complicated it is, the more valuable it is. What if we could reverse that? In the World Trade tab? Yeah, that would be powerful change.

JW Wilson: 00:55:14

Yeah. So basically, once we start looking at helping people understand that the only reason somebody is wants to commit suicide from my world, is because their neurobiology has been so depressed, they can't live life anymore. And death looks better than living. And if we can support them, if we can support through nutrition, through environmental change through whatever we do, their environment, so that we we reactivate the structures of joy, meaning and fulfillment, they won't be thinking about suicide as much.

Jackie Simmons: 00:55:54

My job is to get ahead of the curve. And instead of trying to reactivate someone's biochemistry, J, W, my focus is all on how do we prevent the biochemistry from getting whacked out in the first place? So we're going to take this conversation, pure prevention, we'll have you back for a sequel.

Jackie Simmons: 00:56:15

Thank you, Jacob. Yeah,

JW Wilson: 00:56:17

thank you, peace. Thank you so much. And thanks, everybody watching this, because, you know, there's a reason you're watching this. And if anything touches you in this, I really support you to go out and see how you could add value with what you've learned on this kind of podcast or this chapter into the world.

Jackie Simmons: 00:56:33

All the lengths to everything that J dub is creating all the links for everything that we're doing over teaspoons at the teen suicide prevention society. Links for everything we've talked about will be in the show notes. There'll be in in the bottom of this chapter and your Baia biography in the book. And we will do our best to make sure that this message becomes heard. It's so easy to change. We've been sold a bill of goods that change is hard and change is complicated. It is so easy to change. The books that say you have to have five positives to counteract one negative comment in a relationship are broken and backwards. It takes one positive act that can erase an entire lifetime.

Jackie Simmons: 00:57:23

And both seen it and people. We see it and people like that. And that's the message for the world. What if you really do have a magic wand? You just didn't know what it looked like.

Jackie Simmons: 00:57:35

We're gonna make sure you have access to a magic wand and JW remind me to get your physical address so I can send you a magic wand. We actually have one teen suicide prevention society. You ready?

JW Wilson: 00:57:48

I'm ready, baby. Hit me with it.

Jackie Simmons: 00:57:50

It's a T spin.

Jackie Simmons: 00:57:52

In the bevel. It's engraved and it says You are awesome. And J W you certainly are.

JW Wilson: 00:57:59

Thank you so much. This is when we'll we'll keep working together. Oh, keep making change was to be in your presence. Thank you.