TOUGH TALKS – The Role of Emotional Quotient (EQ) in Success with Dr. William Maxwell

Here is the AI-generated transcript of the whole podcast:

[00:03:24] Chris Dorris: Hey everybody, welcome back to tough talks conversations on mental toughness. I’m your host Chris Dorris and before we get to our incredible guest Today, I want to take care of our, uh, our only our one ever housekeeping item, which is if you are not getting the daily dose mental toughness tips in 30 seconds or less delivered to your email inbox every morning, every morning of the year at about 6 a.

m. wherever you are on the planet, then let’s change that. Let’s make that different by going to Christopher Doris. com backslash lists. L I S T S. Now when you go there, it’s plural L I S T S because you can get on the daily dose there. Or you can get on both the Daily Dose as well as the list where you get notified of these new Tough Talks podcast episodes and my Tuesday weekly blog post.

So, ChristopherDoris. com backslash lists, L I S T S, name, email, click, you get all the goodies. Alright, you know what mood I’m in right now? Let me tell you what mood I’m in right now. I’m in that mood where I’m pumped that I get to. This is the, I get to bring the coolest present to the party mood. I love that analogy.

Like, you know, you’re going to a birthday party and, and you know, you’ve got the coolest present and you’re like, I can’t wait to get that. I can’t wait to get there. I can’t wait to have them open it up and cause I know they’re just going to be yay. Well, that’s what I, our guest today is the gift, Dr.

William Maxwell. Uh, let me, I’m going to tell you about him on a personal level a second, but I want to read, I want to read you. His bio, okay, because it’s just, I mean, I can’t, I can’t read the whole thing. It’s, it’s, it would take an hour, but I want to read some of it to you. Okay. William Maxwell was born in center port point center point, Arkansas, grew up in Arizona, here in Arizona, where he was valedictorian and president of his high school student body.

He studied at Howard, Oregon state, Maryland, California, Oxford and Harvard universities. His master’s and doctorate are from Harvard.

Yes, it’s amazing. Let’s see, in 1957, he was elected to chair an International Education Council for Northeast Asia, headquartered in Tokyo. Uh, he’s conducted research or lectured in over 60 nations in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and North America. He’s published in major journals in Albania, England, Fiji, France, Korea, Nigeria, and the United States.

He’s served on the governing boards of three universities. He’s managed the nomination of many distinguished persons for their honorary doctorate, including Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, Gordon Dryden of New Zealand, professors of physics, Michio Kaku, I want to talk to him about that. Friedhoff copra governor Rose Mofford here of Arizona and Reverend Dr.

Warren Stewart is several rights leader here in Phoenix as well. He has, um, his most important research concerned how to improve the thinking skills of children, which involved over 60 of his students at the university of the South Pacific tutoring over 1600. Six year olds over a four year period, which repeatedly demonstrated IQ gains of 19 or more points.

Uh, and another demonstration in Fiji students from Fiji’s poorest performing high school were coached by him to challenge the most prestigious high schools To a mental abilities test in an all day public competition, the four students from Fiji’s poorest school outperformed the top four students from each of Fiji’s most prestigious high schools.

His light. My wife, Mary Elizabeth, was a public health nurse and co authored some of his books. And then there’s all these incredible highlights, like he’s the founder of the International Conference on Thinking. He’s invented games that make you smarter. And I’ll tell you how I know him. I met him, it was serendipitous.

I was actually waiting to meet with my advisor. Uh, who is advising me, my supervisor for my internship and my own master’s program, right? I was waiting for a meeting and I was sitting in the hallway in this building on campus at ASU. And across the hall is, on the wall, is a bulletin board. And there was an announcement there.

It was for a global, they’re looking for a sports psychologist for the Global Academy. of International Athletics. I thought, that sounds amazing. I’m about to graduate. Let’s take, so it’s, you know, one of those pieces it’s a loose leaf piece of paper, right? And there’s on the bottom, you know, they cut them so there’s like little tabs with phone numbers to call.

Right? So I, you know what I took? The whole announcement. I took the whole, I didn’t take a little tab, hell that, I’m taking the whole damn thing. And Maxwell’s phone number. And, uh, and fell in love with him instantly. I remember I, my first ever conversation with him happened at Super Salad on the Southwest corner, uh, in Tempe, Arizona, a Southwest corner of a Mill Avenue University.

And from then on, it’s just been this magical relationship. That was 1996. And, um, Dr. Maxwell is, is one of the most, um, beautifully influential people in my life. Uh, he is way at the top of the list of, of, um, greatest influencers. And he had, I am, I am smarter and better, way better because of him. He’s, he’s beyond genius.

He’s, he, I, this, I love to say this about him. And I’ll, I’ll, I’ll shut up after this. This is a long intro. Uh, I’ve never met anyone with a greater command of the English language than this guy, and he knows so much about so much. So here’s my prediction. At the and this is not even, like, remotely going out on a limb here.

There’s no risk in this, uh, in this prediction whatsoever. This is sandbagging, like, one on one. You’re gonna be smarter after this conversation. That’s a lock and you’re just gonna fall in love with this guy. So, all right enough Let’s get to him. Let’s let him let me shut up and let him talk. All right, dr.

Maxwell. Where are you man,

William? Maxwell the man I just read your introduction to our audience and I gave them a little bit of our personal background I let them know that you are very high on the list of most influential people in my life I am so honored I talk about you constantly. You are always in my coaching and in my speaking, you have been such a profound influence on me that I am, my heart is full right now to be able to share you the man that I’m constantly so many thousands of people are influenced by you through me.

So thank you, my dear friend and mentor for making time for us today. Tell me.

[00:09:23] Dr. William Maxwell: I

[00:09:24] Chris Dorris: even predicted that he’s the most humble. I told you, I told the flack.

All right, let’s just dive in. Okay. Thinking. All right. Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu said, if you get your mind right, everything else falls into place.

[00:09:49] Dr. William Maxwell: Confucius said that too. Oh, were they buddies? Spiritually, yes. Yeah,

[00:09:56] Chris Dorris: spiritually. Buddha said your entire life unfolds according to the way that you think. William James, as a person thinketh so shall they become.

You are an expert in the world of thinking. You are the founder of the International Conference on It. You have lectured in all over the damn world. Right on it. How did you become so fascinated with this

[00:10:29] Dr. William Maxwell: thinking business? I’m not an expert on thinking, but I recognized when I was in Fiji, particularly, that we, this, our species, doesn’t do thinking well.

We don’t solve problems well. We don’t recognize problems soon enough. Usually we put, we sweep the problems under the carpet too much. And so I am not an expert, but I recognize the problem and try to do one thing to address that problem. And I ask all my colleagues and friends who are the world’s greatest thinkers today.

This is 1980, actually, 1979 when the idea popped into my head, and they gave me all kinds of names, Matana in Chile, di Bono, and Britain and Mar Malta originally, but in Britain, uh, all kinds of names popped up. Uh, the, the French anthropologist called Levi Strau.

So. I went to my faculty and said, why don’t we invite all these people to come to Fiji and think with us? And then the question was, what is the problem that we need to address right now? What is the world’s most serious problem? Well, there are hundreds, but the one that I thought of right then was, The falling IQ of children.

Our children are becoming dumber and dumber. So let’s talk about that problem. But back into my real mind, I knew that the real problem of the world was racism and plain ignorance, just lots of ignorance floating around, superstition. But I thought the IQ of children is one everybody can grasp. It’s a easy, relatively easy problem.

Take ’em off television, dad, talk to the mom, talk to her, et cetera. So let’s do that problem. So the faculty approved the chance, the Vice Chancellor of the University approved, even gave me $2,000 to advertise the conference. So we invited everybody on the planet. We thought of as extra, extra, extra smart, and, uh, they came.

250 of them came just to give you an idea who did not come. Uh, I call Levi Strauss himself, uh, in Paris. And I think at that time he was in his nineties and he said to me, professor Maxwell. I’m too old to travel, but I wish you well. And the other one was Isaac Asimov. Are you familiar with Isaac Asimov? I think everybody, everybody who reads more than the newspaper is familiar with Isaac Asimov.

He’s the only writer in the world to have written in all ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System. Science, religion, philosophy, etc. Technology. Fiction, every section he wrote in. I call him up, and Mrs. Isimov answered the phone. Professor Maxwell, Isaac doesn’t fly. And they have no boats going to Fiji, so it’s these out.

Anyhow, 250 of the world’s greatest scholars, particularly Edward de Bono, came. And we sat for three days and quote unquote solved the problem. And we issued a book, which I edited, and it’s called Thinking. Uh, and we sent it everywhere.

Later on, I found out that very few universities Only about 550 universities ordered the book. And so the question is, do universities think?

Is that book available on Amazon now? Yes, and it’s out of print, but it’s used copies are available. I ordered one recently and it was in good condition, that one.

[00:15:18] Chris Dorris: You’re a Harvard guy. You got your, uh, master’s as well as your doctoral degree there. You know, Harvard does a lot of, has been doing a lot of research on E Q as a better predictor than IQ for success in life.

I don’t know how they’re defining success. I don’t know what that, that actually matters, but I don’t know what their definition is there. Uh, how familiar are you with the distinction between EQ, you listening or watching, don’t know what that means it’s emotional quotient versus intelligence, quotient.

How familiar are you, Dr. Maxwell, with the distinction between the two?

[00:16:00] Dr. William Maxwell: Well, there are 21 mental variables concerning intelligence. How many emotional variables there are, I have no idea. They stop counting. Every single one of those factors play into your success. And so the brightest person in the world that I’ve ever met is a woman named, uh, Dorothea Martin.

I met her in Albania. And she and I was charged with inventing a test that will predict success. So we sat down and we discovered through meditation, Oh, 69 years of teaching, whatever it was. Here are the factors determining success. IQ is way down the list. Number one,

the strength of your family, the power given to you through love from your family. Every great genius that you’ve ever heard of was pushed into genius. Largely, by the strength of his or her family. So guess what? Metaphorically, the devil doesn’t exist. But something like the devil exists in all of our minds.

But guess what the devil attacks first? He attempts to destroy the family. A thousand ways to destroy the family. So, the achievement drive comes out of the family. Your curiosity comes out of your genes and your nature, plus the fact that the family doesn’t squelch your curiosity. Maria Montessori, the great, great, great teacher, points out your future.

Success depends upon your ability to harness your curiosity and follow it, your imagination, etc. So, emotional intelligence is such a global factor that we can’t use it as a factor. You have to break it down. For example, your ability to love. Maturana in Chile, The reason everybody thought of him as a great thinker was when he left the world of biology and became a philosopher and a thinker was he wrote a book called The Biology of Love, in which he says, in effect, every great invention is a product of love.

So your ability to love predicts your success. Now, love is a part of your emotional baggage. Or, not baggage, that’s the bad word. Part of your emotional arsenal and Jesus emphasized that, but ask 100 Christians, Chris, how many commandments are there in the Bible? 99 and a half of them will say 10.

Jesus said very plainly. And now I give you, meaning everybody. I give you a new commandment

that you love one another. We can teach our children how to love. Now that factor was not discussed very much at our first international conference on thinking in Fiji, 1982. But in all future conferences, that will be the principal factor. How do we teach babies? Young children, long before they go to school, how to love someone and everyone.

I’m going to

[00:20:18] Chris Dorris: play a little devil’s advocate just for fun, because I enjoy doing that for the sake of thoroughness for the audience. What if I, what if it’s, what if it’s true that

[00:20:33] Dr. William Maxwell: that is innate?

[00:20:37] Chris Dorris: That when we’re born, we are designed to love. And you see all these videos of children of different creeds and colors, and you know, they don’t know each other.

Children at parks or whatever, walking up to each other and just hugging complete stranger children. So it looks like we got that. Like we don’t have to learn that, and maybe we’re

[00:20:58] Dr. William Maxwell: educated away from that as we grow. Exactly. There’s a beautiful anthropologist who made that point, that we are designed to be loved and to give love.

But somehow the culture, his name is Jules Henry, he was at Washington University, St. Louis. His book is called Culture Against Man. Our cultures inhibit us. From loving each other. Okay. And you see that it’s strange. You see that in every culture in different ways. I lived in Korea 11 years, but my first two or three years, I learned that Korea was a beautiful culture.

I fell in love with the culture of Korea, but there were non touch culture, a non touch culture. When you meet someone new, you don’t shake hands. You certainly don’t hug each other, you merely bow. For example, the Department of English, where I taught at Cheongnam National University in Southwest Korea, it was one of five national universities.

The Faculty of English were four, and I became the fifth member of the Faculty of English. And all five came over to my home every… Once a week, where they were supposed to teach me Korean, and I was supposed to teach them English. Help their English conversation. One of them was telling me about his wife somehow.

And I said to him, just out of, like a curiosity, out of bound. Uh, Mr. Lee, do you, that was not his name, I forget his name, Mr. Chung. Uh, have you ever kissed your wife?

No, he had four Children. Have you ever kissed your wife? No, what’s wrong with the coach that says don’t touch each other? Is that still true? We have

[00:23:08] Chris Dorris: it in our way. No Koreans, but I’ve never been to Korea. Is that still true for Korean? No, it’s

[00:23:15] Dr. William Maxwell: changed. You, you find Koreans hugging each other now.

Particular soccer did that, you know, you know, well, that is hugging is is now acceptable in Korea, but then those this is 1955 hugging was taboo, but every culture find ways to inhibit our natural love. So

[00:23:39] Chris Dorris: then the question isn’t how do we teach children to love? It’s really how do we teach them to continue

[00:23:44] Dr. William Maxwell: to love?

Exactly. And Erickson solved that one. Very Eric Erickson at Harvard. By the way, he never had a doctorate. He never had a master’s degree. Harvard, in order to appoint him professor, had to give him a master’s degree. Anyway, he was, Eric Erickson was the hero at Harvard in psychology, and when, but when he died, he made the front page of the New York Times, front page, lead column, Eric Erickson, he was such a guru, the baby automatically.

At birth falls in love with the mother, can stare uninterruptedly for 20 seconds, 20 minutes at the mother, just falling in love with her and drawing her love to him. But after he falls in love with the mother, he doesn’t want anyone else to touch his mother, get near his mother because that interferes with his love affair.

So he, in effect, hates the father. He goes through the Oedipus Complex. For 42 days, the baby resents the father. Don’t you come in between me and my mother. And he just gets angry as the father comes near. But something happens to the baby 42 days after birth, magically, as if he’s on a divine clock, the baby falls in love with the father, literally falls in love with the father, gives the father tremendous smile, which the damn psychology books call a social smile.

It’s not a social smile. It’s a father smile. But that same father smile does serve also as a social smile, but it’s designed. For the father and the father’s heart melts nature has designed us to love the universe and Erickson points out proper sequence, you fall in love with your mother, your father, your siblings, your clan, your tribe, your city, your nation, your race, nothing wrong with loving your race.

Love it. You’re designed to love your race. Then go the next step. And love the entire human race.

Every research study I know about says only 2 percent of humans have gone that far. I’m sorry. And in fact, 98 percent of humans are still bigots.

Okay. Which is all racist,

[00:26:34] Chris Dorris: right? There’s no bigot baby. There’s no racist baby. Agreed. It’s all learned. No, what racist babies. No. Right. There are no,

[00:26:48] Dr. William Maxwell: all babies are all, all babies are, all babies are anti father. All at birth, all babies are anti father until four, two days. So they’re prejudiced against the father.

42, but, but they get out of it. If the father’s in love with the mother. treats the mother properly, the baby actually falls in love with the father 42

[00:27:12] Chris Dorris: days. So then the baby’s cool with mom and dad and the baby and new humans are, um, automatically loving each other beyond mom and dad. You

[00:27:24] Dr. William Maxwell: agree the baby’s ready to love the siblings, but not immediately, but at some point, okay,

[00:27:32] Chris Dorris: whether we get to one or two or three, like children prior to being educated.

Otherwise, they just love people. They love each other. Yes. Yes.

[00:27:40] Dr. William Maxwell: Oh, loving. They fall in love with the grandparents, bigotry,

[00:27:44] Chris Dorris: uh, separateness, right? Racism. These are constructs that need to be learned. Do you agree?

[00:27:52] Dr. William Maxwell: I don’t see it that way, Chris. Hmm. These are constructs that are built into, but are overcome with natural development.

That is, think of a baby as antifather. There’s no word for that in the English language, but it’s there. Oh, well, I guess we do have a word in the Latin, uh, Greek Oedipus complex. It’s a hate word. The baby hates anybody, including father, that interferes with his relationship with his mother. So the baby grows.

So the baby is built to be prejudiced for 42 days, but the baby is also built to get over it.

[00:28:41] Chris Dorris: Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So maybe that’s like some kind of evolutionary old school Clinging on survival, you know element, but the piece that you just said at the end is the the humans We are also designed to get over that

[00:28:58] Dr. William Maxwell: We are the, we have the ability to get over it, but then the culture says, stay prejudiced.

And this American culture, for example, is probably the most racist culture in the world because it taught, actually spiritually taught, it’s not only good to hate blacks, it’s necessary to hate blacks.

You

[00:29:24] Chris Dorris: believe that we are gradually, let’s remove the word gradually. Do you believe that we are at all evolving beyond

[00:29:30] Dr. William Maxwell: that? The human race is evolving. Whether we like it or not, we are growing in maturity, whether we like it or not. And even though the best establish, for example, I’ll give you a quick economic case out of real life.

In 1962, Milton Friedman solved the problem of racism, literally. He said, if we give everybody a first class education, black, white, yellow, greens, purple people, yellow people, brown people, green people, give everybody a first class education, everybody will have a relatively balanced, demography that is five or six percent of us will be physicians, two or three percent of us will be philosophers, nine or 7 percent or whatever will be scientists and so on.

And therefore we’ll all respect each other. And we’re not, we will not, no longer see color or religion or statue or good looks as barriers to loving each other. It’ll be natural. Everybody will be talented. And we all like to watch talented people at work. So that was published in 1962 by one of the most eminent economists of the world, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman.

He begged, literally begged, universities, foundations. and financial institutions to implement his suggestion. I wrote to all those folks, here’s Milton Friedman’s idea on six pages out of his book, Capitalism and Freedom, and here’s my one page summary and another one page illustrating the practicality of Friedman’s suggestion.

Can I come and talk to you about it? Not one university on this planet was interested, not one foundation on this planet was interested, and not one bank or insurance company or other kind of financial institution was interested. And that was almost six, that was, I mean, that’s 30, 38 plus 20, that’s 60 years ago.

For 60 years, not one person has bothered to literally read Milton Friedman and implement his, His recommendation here is how you eliminate racism. Just let everybody fall in love with the genius, that genius basketball player named Jordan, or that genius, uh, heart surgeon name, whatever. Let everyone fall in love with the genius that they see in front of them and racism will evaporate.

You know, was it Mark culture said, no, don’t do that. Let’s keep our prejudices.

I’m going

[00:32:41] Chris Dorris: to summarize your answer as yes, that we’re evolving beyond racism. And if I’m putting words in your mouth, I apologize, but I hope that that’s… No!

[00:32:51] Dr. William Maxwell: I wish I could be as succinct as you. We are evolving beyond… In fact, the Baha’i faith, to which I’m a member… Has said that very, very explicitly, you know, we went through the tribalistic stage.

We went to the nationalistic stage. Uh, even before, even for that, we were very clannish, et cetera. We’re tribal now. We’re nationalistic now, but the next stage is universalistic. There you go. So did I, we are becoming and will be, will be universal. Well, I

[00:33:27] Chris Dorris: love that. So, you know, you

[00:33:29] Dr. William Maxwell: and I will love all mankind.

Mm hmm.

[00:33:32] Chris Dorris: Was it Mark Twain that said travel is the cure for racism? World travel?

[00:33:38] Dr. William Maxwell: He denied it. I didn’t know that. Well,

[00:33:40] Chris Dorris: I, I love that. Uh, I don’t know if you and I have ever talked about this. You know, we met in 1996. Uh, so you tell me if this sounds like a conversation that we may have ever had. I’ve been for a long, long time of the belief that we should subsidize student international travel here in America.

Give students, uh, maybe out of, like, maybe college age students. The ability to, uh, the option to go travel, particularly to third world countries to simply be an observer and a participant on some level cultures that are profoundly different living life very differently than all that we know, because I believe then that would truly because what you said something earlier that we’re all was right before we press record.

And it was something about that. We’re all connected. Right. So the racism is the perception of separateness and difference and, you know, better, uh, but then when we go experience other people and, you know, we’re the minority, then we really, we see things differently in my experience. And it’s a

[00:34:59] Dr. William Maxwell: beautiful doing that now, actually the peace corps was a manifestation of that.

Uh, there are other pro the British follow with the, what do they call it? The, uh, the British developed the same idea. For example, the college that I headed, the first college in southeastern Nigeria, nearly all of my faculty came out of British Volunteer, BSO, Volunteer Service Organization, which was out of the British Peace Corps and US Peace Corps, that kind of thing.

And a Catholic, there was a Catholic priest who was my chemistry teacher, sent to Nigeria by the Catholic Church, not so much to be a priest, but to be a professor of chemistry. Learning the culture, so on, but the American friends, the Quakers do it a lot, uh, who else does it? Nearly every university now has overseas branches, exchange programs with Bologna somewhere.

[00:36:06] Chris Dorris: You know, there is, um, you gotta help me with this. You’re great at this, so I think you’ll be able to help me. Tell me who was this? Who said this? I know that this is from one of the smartest people in history. I just can’t put my finger on who it was. Every child is a potential genius. Who was that?

[00:36:26] Dr. William Maxwell: Who said that?

The only person that I know who said it first was myself. Yes, it

[00:36:33] Chris Dorris: was. That’s you. So, can we talk about that for a minute? Every child is a potential genius. Really? Yes. Even if they come from a dysfunctional family. Because you said it’s a

[00:36:44] Dr. William Maxwell: family. It’s implied everywhere, though, in the literature. It’s implied, but never so succinctly stated.

I think I’m the first person to say it. I wrote a paper and that was what I Delivered in Nigeria in 2014. Every child is between two genius.

[00:37:04] Chris Dorris: Okay, but what if, I don’t want to hear about this. This is, because I love that. Um, but, but you also said that the number one determinant of success is family strength.

So maybe it’s not inconsistent with that, but uh, A child that comes from a tragically dysfunctional family, can they be successful and can they be a genius?

[00:37:30] Dr. William Maxwell: Well, the beautiful thing about the human nature is yes. I’ll give you two extreme cases. There are two lawyers at Harvard Law School who decided to do a really deep analytical study of delinquents.

So they decided to go deep and study 85 American delinquents. Guess what the characteristic of every one of those delinquents was?

[00:37:58] Chris Dorris: Bad relationship with dad. Exactly. Or after the father.

[00:38:04] Dr. William Maxwell: Yeah, exactly. And the father was not, he was either, more likely he was not absent, he was present but dysfunctional. He was a drunk and abusive.

Even though these 85 kids were abused by this abusive father, 15 of them turned out to be successful. They proved, their names were Gluck, G L U E C K. They proved that even though we’re all abused and mistreated and have excuses for failure, we are designed for success.

So,

[00:38:51] Chris Dorris: you know, there are a lot of different measures, right, of intelligence. There’s so many different measures. We just talked about IQ, we talked about EQ, social, you know, intelligence, athletic intelligence, all kinds of different ways to measure intelligence. So you’re saying every child is a potential genius.

The word potential, so you’re not, the quote isn’t every child is a genius. The quote is every child is a potential genius. And what is the, so what’s it contingent upon? Great family.

[00:39:20] Dr. William Maxwell: There are thousands of factors involved. There’s a beautiful book on my table right now, on my desk right now called The Geography of Genius.

The Geography. Exactly. One scientist just decided to study where in the hell did geniuses come from. And so he went around the world looking for genius explosions. Florence, Italy. Uh. Yes, Florence, Italy. I just go, what’s going on

[00:39:53] Chris Dorris: in Florence? There’s something special about that statue.

[00:39:59] Dr. William Maxwell: There’s something what went on in Florence that created so many geniuses.

Then the other one, the other, the other very great one was, of course, Athens. What the hell went on in Athens about 400 to 500 years ago. The other one was in China and another one was in Chile, India. And guess what? The Chola Indian one did. Not only did they create this beautiful environment, about 900…

900 years ago, that environment had an influence 900 years later, the greatest mathematician in modern time was a person born in poverty in that environment. Uh, what in the heck is his name? It’s right on top of my tongue. Uh, I’ll think of it in a moment. But the two Nobel Prize winners in India all came from choa 900 years later.

[00:41:04] Chris Dorris: How do you spell that? That area or that town

[00:41:07] Dr. William Maxwell: or city? C-H-O-L-A. Chola India. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of Chola India. It was a great dynasty and produced the most beautiful environment in the world and was verified by a Japanese researcher who was Srinivasa, uh, is the name of the mathematician.

Srinivasa Raman, Raman, there are two pronunciations, Ramanujan or Ramanujan. Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician. He was self taught. He taught himself, and he was publishing new ideas in mathematics, even before he went to high school. Uh, that area of India produced all these geniuses, so a Japanese scholar, studying the life of every great Japanese, every great mathematician in the world, said something is wrong here.

You cannot produce great geniuses unless you have beauty. So he flew to India to see what the hell happened in India, and he discovered, wow, that province of Chola still has all these remnants of great beauty, gardens, palaces, amphitheaters, everything. Same with Florence. The same with, look at, look at Greece.

When you visit the

Aparthenon, the mathematical beauty of that one structure alone is inspiring. So every great genius you know of, if you look deeply back into their background, there’s beauty there.

So, Chris, back to your answer. There are thousands of factors determining whether or not the mind becomes Really fruitful. Okay. So

[00:43:13] Chris Dorris: give us a couple ones that are accessible for anyone, some, a couple of things that anyone anywhere could do to strengthen their

[00:43:24] Dr. William Maxwell: minds. Music play to everybody agrees, put music on the agenda.

Suzuki urged us to start music lessons for children at age two. I have a friend, I have his book, I have his, I have a friend who’s a medical doctor in Florida, have his book. He decided to study genius babies and he found, lo and behold, Einstein’s mother. Play great, great music to Albert all day long. So there are thousands of factors operating, and we don’t use but a tiny percent of those factors.

So

[00:44:07] Chris Dorris: you don’t mean playing an instrument, you mean just listening to great music?

[00:44:12] Dr. William Maxwell: Merely listening does it, but then Suzuki goes further and says, Well, if you’re going to listen, you might as well learn how to play, which is a natural inclination. I’m tired of listening to somebody else’s music, I want to make my own.

Okay, that’s great. Thank you. What else?

[00:44:33] Chris Dorris: You, you

[00:44:33] Dr. William Maxwell: created a game. Good, good. Games, please.

I created games, I invented games to start the child. And I send it everywhere anyone is interested to. I didn’t give up yet. Because I have to. Keep going, but that’s not, give up

[00:44:52] Chris Dorris: is not your

[00:44:56] Dr. William Maxwell: DNA.

[00:44:59] Chris Dorris: You are the anti give up. My wife

[00:45:01] Dr. William Maxwell: discovered this one. I mean, she not, didn’t discover it. She just verified this one. We both had a habit of being attracted to geniuses, very, very intelligent people. And Mary was very bold sometimes. She said, well, how come you’re so intelligent? And so frequently the answer was we played games in home.

At home, as a child, we played games with the parents, boy games, parlor games. Yeah, but what was the one that you

[00:45:34] Chris Dorris: invented? So we, I remember being at meetings, the Global Academy for International Athletics, we’d be at these meetings in Tempe, and you had just created this game and you would quiz us all.

You would have to have us do the things and you remind me because I want is that still

[00:45:50] Dr. William Maxwell: available. Yeah. Yeah. It’s still available. It’s expensive

[00:45:54] Chris Dorris: quotient. It was what it was called. Inventive

[00:45:56] Dr. William Maxwell: quotient. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you afford a sets of games for the types of games in that? Is that still available for purchase?

Yeah. Yeah. Where? Where? Through me, through our, through that website. Which one? We changed the name to American Creed Academy. Oh yeah, I just, I was

[00:46:16] Chris Dorris: looking at that. American Creed Academy. It says it’s under construction and will be complete in September.

[00:46:20] Dr. William Maxwell: Just click on it and it’ll open up anyway. Right, right, right.

Just click on it. It’s under construction but you can walk in anyway.

[00:46:30] Chris Dorris: Okay, you don’t need a hat, so give me an example of one. I remember you were saying you combined math and geography. You’d be like where you’re sitting on the right now in this seat in Tempe, Arizona. Um,

[00:46:47] Dr. William Maxwell: I’ve drawn a card with 90 degree symbol. Yes, you must follow that. Where will you end up if you leave?

Yes. Right. Tucson, Arizona or Phoenix, Arizona. Yeah. Which state will you end up in? Right. I have another car with 180 degrees. You have to tell me where if you follow 180 degrees out of Phoenix, where will you end up across some border. Where do you end up? Yeah. Well they answer there is Mexico, et cetera.

Yeah. You are in Honolulu and you draw. 270 degrees, where will you end up? Japan. In Asia somewhere.

[00:47:31] Chris Dorris: Yeah, that’s fun. So, oh, that’s so exciting. I want to get that. I want to, I want to go order that. All right. So, inventive quotient. Let me make a note on that. Because I used to have one and I was looking for it earlier this morning and I cannot find it.

I really thought I had it. I thought it was in that room right there. Inventive quotient. So. That is a series of games. So it’s actually I remember being fun. I remember these funds.

[00:47:57] Dr. William Maxwell: Yeah, it is all games of fun. And that’s how you keep children interested in the future. Chris, let’s say in physics, there are 212 May’s basic principles of physics, the inventive caution.

The implication is, which is the American Computer Academy, we’ll bring to some place like Chandler, Arizona or somewhere, we’ll bring 10 or 12 of the world’s greatest physicists and say, all right, here’s, uh, here are the 212 principles of physics. Instead of lecturing about those damn principles, let’s invent, if there isn’t already invented, a game that will teach that.

But the fact is, clever children have already invented games. That illustrate those 12, those 212 physics principles. For example, children play hoops. 12 of the physics fundamental principles are learned by playing hoops. Just for example, You roll the hoop, you’re the dad, you give the kid a hoop, and he goes out and plays with it for 30 minutes and comes home, leaves it in the middle of the floor.

Well you distort, twist that metal hoop so it is now imperfect. Here’s this six year old kid, he picks up his hoop, and he looks at it and he says, Oops. Already, I’m not of equal length. Therefore, this wheel is inefficient. I’m six years old. I’m going to make this wheel efficient. I’m going to make this.

Wheel round. I’m going to make all the radii of equal length. He did not articulate that. But he knew it. After 30 minutes of playing with the hoop. So he knows one, one great principle of physics. He’s one 212th way to mastering all of physics. By six, but 30 minutes of playing with the hoop. Well, well, in fact, he learned in more principles of physics.

[00:50:22] Chris Dorris: Basically, if I’m hearing you correctly, Dr. Maxwell, all you really have to do to get smarter is listen to great music and play games.

[00:50:33] Dr. William Maxwell: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s a fact. As one of the. Okay. I only ask. Let’s say that 2500 factors in operation. Just operate that one well, and you, you’re on, you’re inspired, so you got the energy to go to another one.

For example, the home must be beautiful and orderly,

orderly. I can guess at the home you grew up in, I’m guessing. It was extremely orderly, you know, exactly when breakfast was going to be, you know, where lunch was going to be and when you can even predict what was going to be for lunch, and you know, dinner, you all sat together and had dinner and talks.

You didn’t get on the telephone while you were having dinner with your family. There was a great orderliness.

So there are thousands of little factors that are operating most of the mind’s conscience. But you learn how to manipulate all of them. You could be late for dinner, but you didn’t, you felt, you didn’t feel good about it.

[00:51:52] Chris Dorris: Have you written, how many books have you written?

[00:51:54] Dr. William Maxwell: Do you even know? Edited and written, about 22.

[00:51:59] Chris Dorris: About, so… Are any of them on this? Like, things that people, like, what are the sum of, if not all

[00:52:07] Dr. William Maxwell: of? Yeah, my Super Parenting book. Super Parenting. Super Parenting. Yeah, that’s on Webazon, and it’s still in print.

Super, it’s only 20 bucks. Super Parenting, one word. Yes, with the P capitalized. Capitalized. William Maxwell Super Parenting. Alright, I’m not too sure. The subtitle is… Child rearing for the new millennium. Oh, that’s nice.

[00:52:34] Chris Dorris: Very nice. And you’re currently working on a grand

[00:52:38] Dr. William Maxwell: parenting one. Grand parenting one.

That’s at Press. In Press. The Christian Publishing House is printing. I just got a note from them yesterday. They almost finished editing it.

All right. And is

[00:52:55] Chris Dorris: Super Parenting also on Amazon?

[00:52:58] Dr. William Maxwell: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s there. Of course it is. Twenty bucks. Nice. It was a best seller in Fiji. Thank you. Oh, really? But not in America. Americans don’t believe in parenting. Oh, all

[00:53:22] Chris Dorris: right. Well, we’re going to sell a whole bunch of copies of your super parenting book and we’re going to get, I’m going to get some inventive quotients and, uh, And, uh, and give them out, give them out.

[00:53:38] Dr. William Maxwell: Ah, you just can’t give that book out because you need the, you need some tutoring to learn how to do it properly.

I have a handbook that goes with the game. Uh, that the whole thing is 40 bucks, but you do with that. I always give 30, at least 30 minutes of tutoring, but you actually need more than 30 minutes. Because it changes the way we think. Let’s say you are a dad. In this case, say you are a granddad, and you’re going to play Inventive Caution with your grandchildren.

You only need to play seven minutes a day, but you engage seven minutes with your child. You’re not only teaching the child geography and, you know, how to use a circle and so on, but you’re also teaching the child how to be patient, how to concentrate. How to focus and how to show respect to grandpa,

you’re teaching what much more than you think you are, grandpa, but if you order it, I’ll send it to you with a caution. I need to coach you how to use it. And that that’s the coaching is free.

[00:55:07] Chris Dorris: Yeah. Oh, you mean like on the phone call like a zoom call like this or I thought you said

[00:55:12] Dr. William Maxwell: we do it on the zoom call.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. Okay. It’s amazing how Zoom is invented just to help, help mankind grow up. But guess what? We, you know, we don’t use it that way,

but actually we are. Take TED Talks. Every one of the great thinkers of the world, not everyone, hundreds of the great thinkers of the world are on TED Talks, and not one TED Talk you’ve ever seen is boring, 18 minutes of exciting knowledge of what every damn thing on the universe, and not one moment of boredom, unlike the typical

[00:56:11] Chris Dorris: school.

You know what I just noticed? As my eyes were wandering as I was listening to you, I looked over at one of my bookshelves, and you know whose name I’m seeing right now? Michio Kaku.

[00:56:26] Dr. William Maxwell: Uh huh. By the way, I was responsible for getting him the honorary doctorate at my university there in Tempe, University of Advancing Technology.

Yeah,

[00:56:36] Chris Dorris: I was there when he came down. I was there. I was in attendance.

[00:56:40] Dr. William Maxwell: That’s right, you were, yes. He’s hysterical.

[00:56:46] Chris Dorris: He, in addition to being brilliant, he, so he, who we’re talking about right now, Michio Kaku, uh, has authored many a book. Uh, the one that I’m looking at, I believe is the physics of the impossible.

[00:56:58] Dr. William Maxwell: His first grade book was the universe beyond Einstein. The what? The young Einstein be beyond, be while you beyond Einstein, okay.

He should have been nominated for the, the, uh, Physics Nobel Prize, he’s been nominated every time, but he’s never

[00:57:24] Chris Dorris: won it. That’s too bad, he’s, he’s great. He’s, he’s so smart and he’s so funny. He makes smart fun, like you.

[00:57:34] Dr. William Maxwell: Well, I can’t be funny. I,

[00:57:38] Chris Dorris: I, uh, I called it when I introduced you, and I’ve said this many times.

That just being with you, being in conversation with you, or even just listening to you for a few minutes, you know, needs to get on the list of things you can do to get smarter, spend some time with or around in a conversation with Dr. William Maxwell. Your I. Q. Goes up. 10 points right there.

[00:58:06] Dr. William Maxwell: I wish, I wish, uh, I know that would be the magic lamp.

That’d be a magic wand. You could wave over. I

[00:58:14] Chris Dorris: told you the other day, that wonderful story. And I tell the story constant. I’m always telling this story in my, when I’m coaching leaders that you included me when I was about 25 years old and had absolutely no real practical experience other than being a social worker.

You included me in some really important events, you know, with the, the global academy for international athletics. And you included me in ways that I felt completely ill prepared for. I was petrified and I felt absolutely inadequate for the charges, the charges that you were, uh, tasking me with. And you believed in me.

And as a result, my, uh, competency self perception skyrocketed and that has changed my life. So I’d like to say, thank you.

[00:59:09] Dr. William Maxwell: Well, in self defense, I chose you to do that because I sensed in you, Chris, you have some high, high, high intuitive power, where you always say the right thing. Most people do not have that power.

Maybe we can, oh, thank you. That’s intuition. It’s not logic. Uh, we underestimate the power of intuition in helping us through life.

Thank you for that. You have

[00:59:47] Chris Dorris: that. I appreciate that. I’m acknowledging that. I’m receiving that. Thank you. It’s

[00:59:53] Dr. William Maxwell: not my idea, but that’s the guy who wrote the book up, the organization Townsend. He said there are only about four or five people in the whole of New York that he trusted. And these people were, they trusted their intuition.

Intuition is powerful. We need to channel it and use it. And believe in it, but our culture discourages intuitive thinking.

We’re, we’re, we’re growing. We are growing, that’s the principle of the Baha’i faith. The human race is about ready to enter a complete new realm of thinking. Global universal thinking. That’s

[01:00:42] Chris Dorris: exciting. Is there a name for it? Or did you just say it? Global

[01:00:50] Dr. William Maxwell: universal thinking. I don’t think it was given a, yeah, well.

That’s what it is. Global

[01:00:58] Chris Dorris: thinking. Or universal thinking.

[01:01:01] Dr. William Maxwell: Yes, universal thinking. Meaning, the wide embrace of mankind. Everything about us is embraceable. The whole species. Despite our flaws. We are, we are the child of God. We are his number one creation. We’re his ultimate creation. There’s no other creation after us.

[01:01:30] Chris Dorris: Yeah, when the um, each morning, I read a document that I created, which we don’t need to get into it, but the first, the first line, I, I, uh,

[01:01:44] Dr. William Maxwell: I learned, I’m divine

[01:01:45] Chris Dorris: grace. Well, it’s a longer version. I’m working on my this is my third. I’m doing my third version of that document right now I am I am an expression of divine grace in human form.

I took that from my studies at the oneness University in India. I am an expression university Oneness. Oneness. O N E N E S

[01:02:10] Dr. William Maxwell: S. That’s the theme of the Baha’i religion. That’s the Oneness

[01:02:22] Chris Dorris: University.

[01:02:24] Dr. William Maxwell: I’d love to hear it. Okay. Well, we’ll, we’ll set that up.

[01:02:29] Chris Dorris: Thank you, doctor. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for, uh, see this, you know, I love about this is like, is so this episode, you know what it feels like when you’re going to a birthday party? Someone else’s birthday and you got them the best present ever.

And you just can’t wait to give it to him and watch him open it. You know, that feeling, that’s the feeling I got right now, sharing you with my tribe. Thank you for being that

[01:03:02] Dr. William Maxwell: gift.

Do it. Thank you as Japanese for you. Thank you. And you’re welcome.

[01:03:17] Chris Dorris: Oh, thank you for saying you’re welcome for me. All right, my dear friend, I appreciate you and love you so much. And thank you for everything. I kind of got to tell you, I told you so. I told you, you’d be smarter after listening to this man.

It’s impossible to not be. His genius is just contagious. God, I haven’t had that long of a conversation with him in a very, very long time. And, uh, I’m, I’m reminiscent of so many, you know, one on ones with him. Also being in team meetings with him where he would just go off and riff and everyone was totally in rapture.

Like thinking how in the hell does this man know

[01:04:12] Dr. William Maxwell: so much about so

[01:04:14] Chris Dorris: much? I think Bill’s 94 right now. How sharp? I mean, he hasn’t lost a step. He’s just crackling. So impressive. What an incredible human being. And you know, here’s a thought that I had. That kind of conversation can’t happen. I call it High Context Communication.

Or it’s called that. And it can’t happen that way. If not for decades of close friendship and mentorship. So I am super excited to go get another, I don’t know, maybe I gave it away. Or maybe it’s somewhere else in my house. The Inventive Quotient. I’m going to get another. A copy of that. I encourage you really to do that.

It’s it’s incredible. It’s a fun way of getting smarter And I had no idea but he’s offering like what comes with it is Uh time with him on a call and he’s coaching you on how to use it I mean that that alone is worth a hell that’s worth worth a thousand dollars So inventive quotient and you can get it at American creed academy.

com. I wanted to ask him. Why is he calling it that? American creed academy. com. It’ll be in the show notes And I also strongly encourage you to get his book super parenting Which is available on amazon All right, as always thank you so much for tuning into tough talks and until next time Great miracle.