Last Updated on: 30th April 2025, 12:28 pm
In a world obsessed with physical fitness, we often neglect the most important muscle of all: our brain. This was the central message from Arnold Beekes, founder of Brain Gym, who talks about brain fitness and training in a recent episode of the Simply Be Found huddle with hosts Rob and Dean.
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About This Huddle’s Special Guest
Arnold Beekes is the founder of Brain Gym and pioneer of the “brain fitness” concept. After a successful corporate career with international responsibilities and management roles, Arnold experienced a profound shift in his professional trajectory. This transformation led him to develop his unique brain fitness methodology.
Arnold offers 15-week training programs for individuals seeking to break free from mental constraints and rediscover their authentic selves. His approach is particularly beneficial for those in midlife transitions, caregivers dealing with dementia, and fitness professionals looking to complement physical training with mental wellness.
Simply Be Found would like to give its warm appreciation to Arnold who took the time and sat down with Rob and Dean for an insightful talk. If you’d like to reach out to Arnold as well, you can do so on these platforms.
Key Takeaways From This Huddle
Arnold introduced the concept of “brain fitness” – a category he developed after noticing a critical gap in our wellness routines. While most people understand the importance of physical exercise, very few apply the same principles to their minds.
“Basically, our brain has been very active during our upbringing in the education system until we are 20-25, but then mostly it flatlines or even declines,” Arnold explained. Without ongoing mental stimulation and growth, our cognitive abilities gradually deteriorate.
The conversation took a fascinating turn when discussing how modern technology, particularly AI, affects our thinking abilities. Arnold pointed out that tools like AI have made many people “extremely lazy” when it comes to critical thinking.
“Reading is associated with analyzing, and that ties into critical thinking. Most people, especially young people but it applies to any age, cannot do that anymore,” he noted. We’re at risk of “becoming like robots” if we don’t actively cultivate our mental capabilities.
Breaking Free from Mental Cages
Arnold’s 15-week Brain Gym program follows six essential steps:
- Reveal – Help people recognize they’re operating in cages with invisible straitjackets
- Recover – Address suppressed emotions and potential addictions
- Reactivate – Reconnect with overlooked aspects of mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental, and social life
- Reset – Change the lens through which you view the world
- Relearn – Acquire new knowledge and skills relevant to your authentic self
- Recreate – Build a new life based on your unique abilities and interests
“Every human being is unique,” Arnold emphasized. “There’s nobody like Dean or Robert or Arnold in the world, nobody.”
Education vs. True Learning
The discussion touched on how traditional education often suppresses individuality rather than nurturing it. “Why does it take at least 20 years in the education system? It takes 20 years to remove your uniqueness and make you the same as everybody else,” Arnold provocatively stated.
Rob and Dean shared their own experiences with education, noting how the system tends to push people into standardized boxes rather than celebrating different learning styles and unique perspectives.
One of the most profound moments came when Arnold described a turning point in his early 40s. After leaving the corporate world, his coach asked him a simple but profound question: “What do you want to do?”
“This was the first time ever in my life that someone asked me, ‘Arnold, what do you want?’ I had no clue,” he recalled. This experience mirrors what many of his clients go through – a blank slate when it comes to identifying their authentic desires after years of conditioning.
Effective Brain Training
Contrary to popular belief, Arnold explained that crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and memory exercises don’t significantly improve overall brain health. They only make you better at those specific tasks.
What actually works? “The main thing which is proven to help is to work on something with purpose, something with complexity, and something which is a challenge,” he advised.
Arnold also highlighted three unexpected activities to stimulate brain health:
- Be kind to yourself – Transform your inner critic into an inner cheerleader
- Embrace duality – Accept both the positive and negative aspects of life
- Try new experiences – Don’t just dream about possibilities, experience them firsthand
Who Benefits from Brain Fitness?
Arnold works with three main groups:
- People in midlife crisis questioning their next chapter
- Caregivers of people with dementia or Alzheimer’s
- Body fitness professionals who want to complement physical training with mental wellness
Perhaps the most inspiring part of the conversation was Arnold’s personal story of reinvention. After financial setbacks and frustration with his home country’s social system, he decided to live abroad – first in Vietnam (which he disliked), then in Budapest (which he loved), and now in Romania.
“I never been to the country. I don’t know any people. I don’t speak the language. But still, I am here, and I’m loving it,” he shared. “You got to try, because maybe when I went to Budapest or whatever, I hate it… I tried it, but it’s not for me. But I experience, and I didn’t know.”
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Transcript
- 00:00 | Welcome to the Huddle with Arnold Beekes
- 00:40 | What is Brain Fitness?
- 02:00 | Why Most People Neglect Brain Training
- 03:20 | How AI Impacts Critical Thinking
- 05:00 | What’s “Normal” Anyway?
- 08:00 | Inside Arnold’s Brain Gym Program
- 10:00 | The Six Steps to Brain Freedom
- 14:00 | Education vs True Learning
- 18:00 | Rediscovering Your Unique Self
- 23:00 | Entrepreneurs vs Corporate Mindsets
- 28:00 | Freelancers and Finding Purpose
- 32:00 | Brain Fitness Techniques That Actually Work
- 36:00 | Balancing Positivity and Reality
- 41:00 | Growth, Friendships, and Change
- 47:00 | Try Before You Dream
- 53:00 | Who Should Join Brain Gym?
- 54:30 | Final Thoughts and Thank You!
00:00 | Welcome to the Huddle with Arnold Beekes
Rob: Welcome to the Simply Be Found huddle where you get Dean and Rob talking about all kinds of stuff business and marketing and just having fun in a raw and uncut way and manner. Um, this morning we got Arnold on with us. Arnold, how are you doing?
Arnold: I’m excellent, thank you very much.
Rob: Now you’re with the Brain Gym. What the heck is the Brain Gym and can you kind of tell us a little bit about yourself?
Arnold: Where do you want me to start?
Rob: Well, well, we—I found out in the green room you guys are both 66, so I mean, uh, I’m the youngest of the group so… yeah, you guys can start wherever you guys want to start.
00:40 | What is Brain Fitness?
Arnold: Well, yeah, your first question was around the Brain Gym. I developed a—what in marketing term they call a new category, which is called brain fitness. Well, everybody—well, I would say everybody knows that body fitness is like, yeah, you need to exercise, you need to move, you need to keep your body well in—it doesn’t mean necessarily in a good shape, but you got to keep on moving, whether it’s walking your dog, playing tennis, going swimming, going to the gym. All these things are necessary and really good for you, and most people are are doing it in some form or another, and they understand why they’re doing it because you would like to be able to still do things when you’re 66 or older. So it’s like, it’s like—um, so that makes sense, but what do we do for our brain?
02:00 | Why Most People Neglect Brain Training
Arnold: Basically nothing. Basically, our brain has been very active and working in our upbringing in the education system, uh, until we are 20-25, but then mostly it flatlines or even—if we do not much—it declines, because most people, they sometimes do a training or a workshop or a new tool which they they have to learn how to use, but their brain is really static. And it’s not—so what happens to most people’s brains if you do nothing is that it, over time, it starts to degrade and decline your cognitive abilities. And so that’s something which you clearly don’t want. So that means just like with your body, you got to work on your brain fitness. So that’s why I developed brain fitness.
Dean: Man, I—I must have taken the other route and didn’t work on regular fitness and worked on brain fitness because I feel like I’m learning new stuff, especially with how fast technology is moving right now, and my—my programming and brain has been all over the place. But, um, I—I—I guess I’ve never really thought about that—a—a lot of people don’t use their brain like they did when they were back in school.
03:20 | How AI Impacts Critical Thinking
Arnold: Well, actually, I—I would say you—you bring up AI, which—which is kind of a rabbit hole, but I really would like to touch it, is that, uh, AI, if you look at especially students and young people and college people are using it, it makes them extremely lazy. It makes them—it makes them—and—and there are—there’s a lot of research around it, so I’m not making it up. They—they can hardly read if—if you have them half an A4, half a page, and say read this and then tell me what you just read, they can’t. So it’s—it’s reading, it’s writing, it’s understanding what you have read, and it is—it is about—and that relates to analyzing. Reading is associated with analyzing, and so that ties into your critical thinking. Most—most especially young people, but it goes for any age, is like people cannot do that anymore. So I think that—yeah, Rob, you—you—you highlighted—this is extremely important because it—it means that—well, we are—a lot of people are on the verge of becoming like robots.
Rob: Well, well, we are inside of that world. I mean, so when I—when I talk about AI, I think the AI area for the common person, it’s turned into almost being almost like the calculator to where we’re relying on it like we did it way back in the day. And I think it has made a lot of people think that they can do jobs that they’ve never been able to do before and oversell themselves. It’s definitely brought that whole piece. When I talk about the AI piece and using my brain, I’m on the other side of the AI and developing AI systems for how they work and talk to each other and the programming and all that different stuff. So—but I think it’s one of those things to where AI is really going to make people where they have to use their brain a lot more to be able to exercise it, so I think you’re on to something there for the common person.
Arnold: Yeah, and well, it—then is—what—what’s the definition of the common person? But what—what I’m seeing is that what’s normal, right?
05:00 | What’s “Normal” Anyway?
Arnold: Okay, so—so—so now—now we just entered that topic of what—what’s normal.
Rob: So—so now, when I went through my divorce way back in 2008, I had went through a custody battle and my ex-wife wanted to say I was absolutely crazy and lost my mind and—had all these big things that she wanted to say. Well, they’re like, “Okay, so you have to go in for a psych exam.” Psych—psych exams—the same psych exam that they use for the military, and they use it for, um, police officers and all that stuff. I got done with it, it’s like a three-hour test, that thing was a pain in the ass. It was like answering all these dotted questions of, you know, this question and that question, just to give that whole personality traits and all this stuff to it. I got to the very end, and I’m sitting with a psychologist afterwards—I think that’s what he was—and, um, I’m like, “So how did I do?” He goes, “Well, you’re just as normal as everybody else on the street.” I said, “Well, damn, that’s awfully scary.”
And I said, “I don’t know if I should say I passed or if I should say that this is going to be really horrible—I go back to my court case.” And he goes, “Well,” he goes, “You’d pass it enough to be in the military or the be a police officer.” Okay, I take that as a good thing, but I’m like, I’m still not sure I’m leaving this office feeling very good about being normal.
Arnold: Well, actually, in—in the advertising industry, I’m not sure, but I think it was in the 1920s or 30s, but at least the beginning of the—of the 1900s, they—for advertising purpose, they—they want to define is like: what’s a normal man and a normal woman? Because that would be their baseline for advertising. And—and the savs is like, this—the way they look, this is how old they are, this is what they dress, and everything. The final conclusion of their exercise: they couldn’t find anyone who fitted that profile. That’s—that’s amazing.
Rob: Everybody’s a little left up in their own way when you look at the normal person. So I—I mean, we all have our flaws, and that’s what makes us human, um, and what makes us, I guess, away from that robot piece that we’re starting to become for not. And I—I guess that sheep effect where everybody kind of wants to head that one direction and wants to follow everybody else, you know, kind of like—I can’t remember what that bird is that fall—follows itself, everybody follows it and they all fall off.
But I mean, so when you’re talking about, you know, brain exercise or brain fitness inside of this, what do you teach people inside of that, especially like—we have a lot of listeners that are small business owners and marketers. What—what do you kind of do with them? What’s—what’s that look like?
08:00 | Inside Arnold’s Brain Gym Program
Arnold: Well, what—what I have is a—a training program which is a 15-week training program, which every week has a 90-minute session where I well, I discuss many, many different topics. And basically what I do, I—well, I—I—I shake you to your core, because like, “I didn’t know that, nobody told me that, why did nobody told—tell me that before.” Um, that—that is what I do. And—and in—in—in—in steps, I got six steps. The first step is, uh, is called this—of—is called the six Rs. The first R is reveal, yeah? I help people to reveal that basically everybody of us is operating in a—in a cage, and—and that we are wearing a lot of invisible straight jackets, and the main thing what I’m—I’m enabling—because you got to do the work, I’m—I’m just an enabler—is like, you need to remove the straight jackets.
10:00 | The Six Steps to Brain Freedom
Arnold: So the second step is to recover, because most of us, by being in a cage, you suppressed your emotions, you’re most likely addicted to something, yeah? So you need to recover from that. Then you need to reactivate a lot of qualities and a lot of things how your inner life works, which have been totally ignored, yeah? Meaning you got to work on your mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental, and social aspects. Then you got to reset, yeah? And reset means, if you look at life, it—like, well, obviously you can see I have glasses, and—and they seem what, but it’s like, if I put purple glasses in it or green glosses, I see the world totally differently, right? Yeah, so once you start resetting your lens, is like, hey, for instance, and—yeah, let me put a bombshell here, is like: most of the things what we taught at school and in life and by the government are lies, and they’re not the way things work in life.
So that is the way you—you—you like—oh, I—I—I—I was taught to believe everything what I’m teaching you is—well, don’t believe it. So—so that is—that is the reset. Um, then it’s—it’s like relearn, because we—there’s so many things which way you already touched, like new development like AI or your mindset or health related, we’re never taught, we don’t know. So you got to relearn certain stuff. And the last—last step, the sixth step is—is what I call recreate, based upon everything you learn, is recreate your life, recreate who you are, recreate what you want to do.
Dean: No, so what you’re saying is, the truth will set you free, but it’s got to really hurt to get there, kind of thing. But—but, you know, in education, they were always trying to stuff us back in a box. I always felt, and Rob, he knows where I’m going to go with this, and my—he’s going to talk about kindergarten again.
Rob: Yeah, I’m going to talk about kindergarten. I would—they had—as your daughter said, “You’ll never get over that, even though—” it happened over 40—she goes, “It happened, Dad, it happened over 40 years ago. You could get over this.” But it’s still one of those things that triggers you, that at an early age, you were trying to not get in the mold, and they were always trying to stuff you back in the box. And it’s what it always felt like to me, and I was always getting in trouble because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. And that was one of my—you know, I just couldn’t do it.
14:00 | Education vs True Learning
Rob: I mean, I—when I was—it got in the corporate world, they said, “Dean, you’ll really go far, but you need to learn to sit down and keep your mouth shut,” and I said, “That’s not going to happen, because that’s not how it’s going to go.” So what you’re saying is, people get—they get a certain mindset going on, and you’ve got to basically teach yourself to think independently and—and reformulate and—and find your truth yourself. Is that what you’re trying to teach?
Arnold: 100%. 100%. Yeah, and it’s like, I can connect it with our discussion which we—we just had a few seconds ago around being normal, is like: every human being is unique. We are totally unique. There’s nobody like Dean or Robert or Arnold in the world, nobody. So we’re totally unique. So you can question: why does it take at least 20 years in the education system? Well, it takes 20 system to remove your uniqueness and make you the same as everybody else. That’s why it takes 20 years.
Rob: Well, I was having a conversation with my wife the other day about the education system. So we have a daughter that does really well in school, honor roll, everything else. We have another that doesn’t. I mean, she passes her grades and barely gets by and does her own thing and beats her own drum. She’s more like I am. And, uh, we were talking about what we, you know, what we care about inside of this education system versus what, you know, was there. And my biggest thing is, is I—I wanted my kids to be able to write, be able to read, and be able to do basic math. Those are the three—three major things to be able to pull out of school. If they can pull that out, I really don’t care about what the report card says, as long as they’re passing in some capacity and they can take that to that next level where they are. I mean, um, my youngest daughter is almost like I am for that aspect, because, um, in kindergarten, she got asked to do an assignment, and she simply wrote the word “no” on one of her pieces of paper. Teacher almost had an absolute heart attack over it, and I was like, “Oh, awesome.” She didn’t want to do it, okay? Like, it’s kindergarten, what are we going to do about this?
I mean, but it—it’s to where I never fit into that box inside of school. I never fit in there. I challenged everything, um, all the way to the very end. I ended up homeschooling and end up going through a whole religious piece, and I got asked to go research six different, uh, religions that were out there and come back. And it was a very religious homeschooling piece. I did—well, then I questioned everything inside of religion based on all these different religions. I came and did, and you would have thought I was, you know, the worst person in the world inside of that room. They asked—they asked, and believe, and I ended up not going back and got my GED. But that’s a whole another story.
But I think that the education system wants to put everybody into the same exact hole and—and it does not allow us to be unique inside of those aspects and doesn’t allow us to grow and learn the way that we want to learn, because I don’t think every—I don’t think everybody learns the same way. I think everybody learns in their own unique way, and everybody’s a little bit different. And Dean, you—you might disagree with me on that. I know you come from a huge educational background.
Dean: I do. My family—my family’s a bunch of educators, Arnold, and basically, I think you have to go through the mental gymnastics. You have to learn certain things, you know, how to read, how to do research, how to do mathematics, and—and then get into your disciplines. But—but as far as some of the things where, you know, you—you sit down, shut up when the bell rings, you do this, you do that—that’s where I think—but I understand, you got to have some discipline in the classroom. But, you know, but it gets really hard to say this is—you’re—you’re being unique, and yet you have to learn some things, especially as our minds are growing until we’re—what, about 25 years of age now, I think, is when they figured out that’s where we absorb the most knowledge and we’re most creative. I don’t think it stops for some people, but it sounds to me like that’s where you’re going with that. It doesn’t stop when the education system stops for you. Is that where you’re going with that, Arnold?
Rob: Yeah, and I think—I think Arnold’s also going to the point to where he’s going to that—Dean, but he’s—and correct me if I’m wrong on this, Arnold—you’re also going to the point to where you’re reprogramming your brain to where you can be unique again and—ex—let your mind go explore and make that uniqueness come back out.
18:00 | Rediscovering Your Unique Self
Arnold: Yeah, and—and that is why I say it’s like a 15-week program is not much compared to a 20-year conditioning. So that’s why it takes 20 years—think about it. Why does it take 20 years to make you an obedient in the machine? And—and that takes a long time because like I said, everybody’s different, got different learning style, different interests, different curiosities, different background, different cultures, different thing. And now we—we try to squeeze you all in the same box, and so that’s why it takes so much time and effort, which is totally crazy, because you ruin everybody’s uniqueness, and you ruin everybody’s passion and curiosity and interest because it—it—it—it’s totally not suited to where you are. So that’s why—well, I was part of that, same thing, it’s like when they ask people when they’re 18 or 19 or 20, or when they’re finishing, it’s like, “What do you want to do? Who you are?” And nobody has a clue because everything what was unique about you is pushed out of you.
Dean: I agree with you there. I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up, Arnold.
Arnold: Yeah, well, we got plenty of time left, Dean. It is—I—I have 20 years to rediscover. I hope I make it that much further along—along—maybe longer, maybe less. I don’t know. Who knows? But so—so, dur—during your 15-week course, you kind of do that. What—what else—what else does someone get inside of that 15-week course, Arnold? I’m kind of curious.
Arnold: Well, it’s—it’s—it’s like basically it—like starting a new life it—like, because you—you start, hopefully very soon, you start to realize that, well, a lot of the stuff which is being told is not true, or it’s not true for you, and it doesn’t work for you. And it’s like that you start to—is like, “Yeah, but what do I want to do?” I was in the beginning of my 40s when I—I—and this was in 2000, around 2000—I had a coach. So this is already 25 years ago now—it’s normal, but 25 years ago, it was not, yeah? But I had a coach, and I—I—I just got kicked out of the corporate world, and I was saying, “I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want this anymore.” I dislike this, I like—”I want to be the general manager because I hate bosses,” and like, “Yes.” So I was ranting, and—and he was like, “Okay, Arnold, I understand, but what do you want to do?”
Rob: Huh. So let me guess, you went and started your own business?
Arnold: Well, that is what you did, but it’s like, this was the first time ever in my life, I was beginning 40, that someone asked me is like, “Arnold, do you want?” Right? I had no clue. And I’ve applied this—this same approach to many, many of my clients, and everybody’s like, it’s a blank slate, like. So—well, there may be a handful of people on the world, you know, is like, “Hey, I want to be a football player. I want to be a doctor. I want to be this or that,” but most people have no clue, yeah? So that is when you start to think about these things, is like, who am I? What do I want to do? What do I like? Very interesting question.
Yeah, I—I said I teach people around mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental, and social. The only thing which I was really good at was the mental part, because that’s the only thing which they teach you, that’s the only part which is relevant to them. So—emotions—emotions, you’re supposed to suppress them, so there are no emotions, yeah? Spirituality, for me, was like, well, a bunch of folks with beards and—and gray socks and—and look pale faces, and like, “We go meditate,” like.
Rob: Well, I got a beard, and I’m wearing gray socks. I guess I think the same damn thing. ‘Cause here we go—
Arnold: Look, I had no clue. I had no clue. Nobody ever talked about these things. So I went, and I say, is like, I became an explorer of my own life. And like, what is that? Why are people interested in this? How does it work? And I—I came to realize, although I had been in terms of business and career very successful, it’s like, yeah, very, very big management responsibilities, and a nice house, and I drove a Mercedes and everything, is like, it looked like Arnold is successful. But Arnold was not successful, because I was just—I knew how to play the game of being an obedient slave.
Rob: So the thing is, you weren’t su—that you weren’t successful, it looked like from the outside in. And the big—biggest reason why you weren’t probably successful is because you weren’t happy.
Arnold: Yeah, you were not—well, I—I was like, I—I mentioned in step two, recovery is you’re addicted to a lot of things to not feel the—of your daily life. So that mean that if—if I would come home in the evening, I would drink alcohol, and quite a lot of alcohol. And—and I—I went on holiday—well, this is Europe—I went on holidays three, four times a year, and in the weekend I did—so, but a lot of these things—well, although some of them are nice to do, they’re an escape, right? So an escape from that life, which in essence, I—I—I—yeah, I really—now in hindsight, not at the time—is like, I felt like a robot, is like, “Hey, you got to do this and this and play the game like this and this, then I’m okay.”
23:00 | Entrepreneurs vs Corporate Mindsets
Dean: So I got a question for you, Arnold. Do you do—what—do you get a lot of small business owners in your program, or is it more corporate? I mean, or—
Arnold: No, I don’t get corporate. I—I—I because what I teach them is to get out of corporate.
Dean: I was gonna say, I think that kind of goes against the whole program. It’s kind of oxym—or—so—so you get small business owners in there, uh, people that have their own businesses. How—there’s different levels where they’re at. Aren’t they a little more independent? Aren’t they more free-thinking? They—they know where they want to go a little better than—than the average person? I mean—I mean, because everybody, you know, not everybody can be a business owner, obviously, because not everybody has that drive. But do you feel that that small business—do you get enough of those in there to—to make a conclusion on the attitude, if you—
Arnold: Well, it depends on your age, but a—a lot of people, when—when you’re older, you—mostly, you start in the corporate world. When I—when I finished university and—and I start working, it was not an option to—to become a business owner or run a startup or whatever—those words I never heard about. Yes, so it’s like—yes. So when you’re—with older, you always start in—well, or it’s—it’s a big corporation or the government or these things where you start to work. And then, when you make a choice to get out of it, people who are—their business owners, set up their own business, they already did a lot of the work. They already did a lot of the work, but mostly it still is a—you’re copying what other people are doing, although the work—like, “Hey, I got to understand what I like, what I love, where I’m good at, what”—all these things you address. But still, you’re like, “Oh, I—I do what this fellow has been doing, and then I will be successful.”
And then so, everything is around well, because that’s what you learn at school, is like copying—copying other people, copy successful people, and then you realize, “Oh, it’s not working.” So—so it’s like—now, long—people who now graduate, whatever, he’s like, “Oh, I want to have a startup, and I want to become a billionaire and—and—and everything like that.” But like, “Oh—oh, I’m not a billionaire in two years.”
Rob: So, I’d say you’ve got three different types of business owners, in my opinion. You have the business owner who is the entrepreneur that starts something. It’s a proven industry, the industry’s been out there for years, and they just—they—they have the skill set to be able to go out and be able to do it. So that’d be like landscaping, contracting, could be a chiropractic, could be all that. Then you have the person who’s the entrepreneur spirit that has more of the inventor piece, and they create new areas that have never been thought about before. And usually those two personalities combine against each other.
And then you have a different type of entrepreneur spirit, which follows more inside of that world of copying, and that’s where the—they go and they buy a franchise, because what they want is they want all the systems in place. They’re looking for that corporate world to make sure that everything’s in place so they don’t have to think about it, and they can just, you know, spin it up, and this is how we’re going to run the business.
Now, I’ve had the opportunity from my entire history to where I was raised around entrepreneurs and just kind of not following the norms inside of that area, so that was very easy for me, and I always knew I wanted to do that. Now, I also had the opportunity when I was working in the corporate world being able to do some of the franchise. I did franchisee-or training and all that different stuff inside of there and franchisee training to where we worked on the franchisee-or side with the franchisees inside of that business.
And those are two different types of—of entrepreneurs, or three different different types of entrepreneurs, I guess I would say. And then you have a couple different routes for the mindset that’s there. You have the ones that are, you know, wanting to take a business and have a job, which—which that—that means they’re working in that job every single day. Then you also have that business owner that wants to be able to create a business, but them not have to be there every day. They might have to be there at the very beginning, but they don’t—it’s—it’s not a job. It’s an actual business. “I’m going to start this business, and someday I’m going to sell it. It doesn’t depend on me to be able to run.”
So when I’m going through and I’m looking at any of the business owners out there, those are the categories I’m looking at. I’m trying to figure out, especially when I’m doing business coaching with somebody, I want to find out which box they’re in, because the way they’re going to learn is going to be different, their thought process is going to be different, and their entire way that they’re going to look at risk and being able to look at risk-rewards is completely different. From your side, what do you see inside of there, and what do you agree with? What do you disagree with?
28:00 | Freelancers and Finding Purpose
Arnold: Well, I cannot disagree with it because that—that is something which is a fact. I’m—I would like to add a—a huge category, which—which I would call the category of freelancing, yeah? Yeah, is people like, “I’m a—a—spec—specific, well, it used to be SAP,” or, “a specific software product. I—I was a specialist. I got kicked out. Hey, there’s still demand for what I’m doing, so I’m now doing exactly the same work, only it’s my own company.” Yeah, right? And I—and I would say that’s somebody that’s looking to get a job, because they’re looking to be able to just have that—themselves, they’re look—they’re fine with that whole entire piece.
And there is a lot of people who want to become a coach or a trainer or—or, well, set up a bed and breakfast with his wife, or—or thing like that. So, you get all kinds of different motivations and drives of—of—of people willing to do that. I—I have two types of training. One is called “From Fitting In to Flying Out,” and that means is helping people who have, up till then, worked as an employee, and now they are like, “Well, I want to do something else.” So that is that is the category one.
The other category which—which I’m addressing, I call “From Flying Out to Extraordinarian,” and that means is people who are typically the ones you describe, Rob, is like, those are there, but they’re like, “Hey, I’ve been running my own business”—well, “I’m not a billionaire yet. I’m not making an impact. Okay, I’m earning my money, but I’m working my ass off all day. I’m doing method X, and then I followed method Y, and then I did these steps and these steps, and like, I’m still not making”—well, in—in Dutch, you would say, “a tent in a package of butter,” so it’s like not happening. Yes, so I help them and say, “Let go of all these prescriptions. Let go of all these programs, and totally use your uniqueness, yeah, and use your uniqueness in what you’re trying to do.”
And most of people—well, at some age, a lot of them is like, “I want to do something good for the common good. I want to help people. I want to make the world—this shitty world—it’s a shitty world—make it a little bit better. What can I do to—in—to help with that?” That is a different training program.
Dean: Gotcha. So—oh, there’s so many—I mean, there’s so many things you can do with—with this. Um, let’s—let’s—let’s kind—I know we—we’ve talked personalities. Let’s talk about a little bit about the gymnastics of your brain. What do you recommend are some good gymnastics to keep your brain sharp? I mean, I—I know what I do for things. I like to read. I like to listen to books. I study. I like to do research, those kinds of things with—I’m a big gardening guy. I love to talk about that stuff. Is that—is that what I should be doing, or should there be other steps that I should be doing in the fitness side of this on the gymnastics side of the brain to keep it sharp?
32:00 | Brain Fitness Techniques That Actually Work
Arnold: Well, the main thing what a lot of people—if you follow the prescription out there, like, “You should do cross puzzles. You should do sudoku. You should do memory test or getting the phone numbers,” whatever, there’s been a lot of research that—that doesn’t help a bit. It doesn’t help at all. It only makes you better in remembering phone numbers. So it’s—it—it doesn’t do anything else for other brain areas or whatever. So all of those things, when people ask me, is like, “Oh, Arnold, you have some memory exercise,” whatever, “No,” because I don’t—it doesn’t help.
The main thing which is proven to help is to work on something with purpose, something with complexity, and something which is a challenge, yeah? So you really got to make this—well, actually, we talk about brain, and then I—for those only listening, I point to my head—and then we think that’s the brain, but actually we got three brains. So—oh no—
Dean: They’re going to talk about the brain my wife thinks I think about with all the time.
Rob: The little kid of me could not keep from saying that. Oh my, Rob.
Arnold: Yeah, well, what you were talking about is sometimes called the fourth brain, so you are right in a sense, yeah? But there—there’s called the your headbrain, you got your heart brain, and—and—and you got your gut brain, yeah? We’re totally not used to use your gut brain and—and—and your heart brain. So that is what I also teach people, and—and the—so number one is purpose, complexity, and challenge.
The main things, if you want, I—I want to make a suggestion, Dean, about three activities which you can do to stimulate your brain. And number one, most people don’t expect when I say that, number one is be kind to yourself.
Dean: I agree. I agree. I agree on that.
Arnold: We—we all know that inner voice inside of us, which has even a name. It’s called the inner critic, yeah? We’re also most of them—all of us, I was, and still am to a certain point, extremely critical to ourselves, yeah? If we were so critical like we are to oursel—to other people, we wouldn’t have any friends. It’s like we’re really horrible against ourselves.
Rob: I mean, I—I and I think the world has caused a lot more negative talk and a lot more anxiety, and I agree on that being attached to the gut, because I think there’s a lot of gut issues that come from, you know, that connection that they’ve started to figure out between the brain and the gut. So I—I agree with that.
Arnold: Good. So you have to transform your inner critic in what I call an inner cheerleader.
Dean: So—so you—you have to be able to forgive yourself too, don’t you, Arnold? I mean, you’re constantly—
Arnold: Yeah.
Dean: You know, because I—we all screw up. I—I do it, and I go, “Why did I act that way?” Or, “Why did I do this?” And you have to go, “Okay, I made a mistake, now I got to forgive myself and let’s go on.” I mean, I think people have a hard time, you know, forgiving—they’re easier to forgive other people for their transgressions or their mistakes than they are themselves. You—is that where you’re going?
Arnold: Absolutely, absolutely. And—and—and—and that’s quite crucial, because we—if we don’t do these things, is constantly inner critic and—and constantly like we’re not forgiving and we’re blaming other people, we’re blaming ourselves, or whatever, we end up having a lousy life because it’s—it’s all focused around negativity. And that negativity stores somewhere in your body, yeah, is you can get cancer, you can—you can get a stroke, you—all—all kinds of nasty thing, but that’s because you—well, you—you use your body as a storage room for all your negativity.
Rob: So do you tap into, during your training inside of that spot or what you teach people to do to get over that, do you hit into the whole entire piece of positive self-talk and how much power the brain really has to be able to control itself and where it’s going? Um, I was listening to somebody—I forget who it was—the other day that was talking about, you know, you should wake up and think about all the positive things and that you want to be able to do, because you can shape the universe to go that direction. Do you kind of hit on that some inside of your program?
36:00 | Balancing Positivity and Reality
Arnold: I’m quite recently coming to the conclusion that that is only one half of the puzzle. Okay, and there’s one which sounds like a difficult term, is we live in a world which is driven by duality, and duality means there’s positive and there’s negative, there’s light and there’s darkness, they’re suffering and they’re flourishing, yeah? So but it’s both. It’s—so by focusing only on one thing, sooner or later, the other thing will pop up.
Rob: It’s no different than the truth versus the false or lie. I mean, it—it always comes up to the surface.
Arnold: Yeah, but it’s—it’s like, imagine you’re in a swimming pool and you have a football, and—and you—you press it under water. You can do it maybe for a minute if you’re strong, maybe for a few minutes, but sooner or later, you—you start to get tired, and bam, it erupts, yeah? That’s what we do to our emotions all the time, yeah? And it’s like, “Hey, I’m supposed to be happy all the time. I’m supposed to be healthy. I’m supposed to be positive,” and it’s like, “It’s great, everything’s fine.” Well, it’s not.
Dean: So—so you’re ignoring one piece of life, right?
Arnold: So it—it’s like, it’s always there, it’s always both. You have your cuff. I have my cuff and my eyes, whatever, and it’s—
Rob: I’m hoping the allergies go away faster than what they came on, but I—I’m probably stuck with it for another 30 days, you know. But, you know, as a—as a business owner, I know there’s positives and negatives, and you can be having a really crappy day, and you get a phone call from a customer. You have to turn that switch on to say, “I’ve—you know, you don’t want them to get negative vibes from you, so you have to put on a little bit of facade for—for people as well, because you don’t want them to go, “I’m having a shitty day. Uh, this person called up, they didn’t like this, what I did, and then this person did this. It’s all their fault. My supplier didn’t come through for me.”
And then you get this next call. They go, “Hi, I’d like to find—get a quote for this.” You go, “Oh, I’m so glad you called me, and we’re—” you know, you have to take on a—you—you still, as a business owner, you have to—that duality has to be kind of forced out and always be positive, because it—it—it hurts you if you’re that negative Nancy, if you will, or negative Karen, or whatever you want to—whatever that is out there.”
Dean: I was say, I think they call it negative Karen here in the US now.
Arnold: Yeah, yeah. Oh, the boo-birds is what we—you know, you don’t want to be a boo-bird either, you know, kind of thing.
Dean: No, but—but it’s—it’s like, it’s nuance. It’s not black and white. So it’s like, if—if—if you—well, you—you just get a serious health issue, and it impacts you, you can be honest about it and—and it—like, pretending that everything’s fine while you’re—you’re—you cannot sleep because the pain in your leg, which I had for three years, by the way. I had a very severe car crash three years ago. A guy nearly ran me death. So it—like, I couldn’t sleep for three years because the pain in my leg.
So it—like, by just sharing it, and—and not expanding on it, but like, people understand and people appreciate, because if—if you—if you share, if you share your—you must pay attention—within five seconds, people start to share their—yeah, it’s like—so it’s—it’s like being honest, yeah? It’s like—yeah, why am I in—in the industry of mental health? Because I grew up in a family which, by now, I would say all of the other family members would have been classified with a mental illness. The last nine years, I took care of my mother with dementia and Parkinson. I had a sister to help with depression, yeah? Those things are not nice, yeah? So it’s not like there was an angel on my shoulder and said, “Arnold, you got to—you got to move on brain fitness.”
Rob: Well, you—it—like, it was a lot of which brought me to this situation.
Dean: Uh, it’s—so—it’s so true. I mean, you do the things you have to do in this world, and you have to carry the burdens that you have to carry. But—but if you start sharing your—too much with everybody, and they share theirs back, then you have the—show going on. So you can’t live in a world of negativity, but like I said, it’s always both, it’s—it’s—like, always both.
41:00 | Growth, Friendships, and Change
Arnold: Yeah, and the world will always, because—because of that, which all of us have experienced, we can have this conversation, because the world will always toss people into your world when you need them as well. So when you go through certain things, you start to—you know, the universe automatically starts to line those things up, because that’s just how the universe works in that way and that pattern. So if you’re going through this life experience, chances are you’re going to be toss somebody inside of that same experience. That’s why friends come and go, and friends don’t usually stay within, you know, as—as connected as you were. You might have a friend that—everybody usually has that friend that comes and goes out of their life when you need them most, or when they need you most, and it kind of shifts all around the place. That’s—that’s the universe and how it’s controlling and what your brain is really doing inside of those areas from what the research I’ve done.
Arnold: Absolutely, and then I—was just recently writing down exactly what you said, is that if you—if you grow—yeah—most people don’t, by the way, but if you grow, that means you have in every stage of thing, you get different friends because they might grow at a different pace than you are, or not grow. Yeah, if people ask me, is like, “Arnold, what’s your favorite book which you read all of your life?” Like, “No, there’s—there’s a book which I read then, and another book which I read then, and another book which I read then.” You—so it’s like, “Yeah, so what’s your favorite music?” Well, my favorite music now is different than when I was 15. So it’s like, if you grow and develop, there’s some other things which points to that and—well, I—I can say it—looks like we all love learning and growing and developing. So in each phase in which you’re in, there are other people, there are other products, there are other activities which suit that particular phase.
Rob: How many—how many times inside of your program do you have experience it when you’re coaching somebody and going through that whole entire 15 weeks to where their friends are what are holding them back, or their acquaintances, or their spouse, or something inside of that area, and that’s what’s keeping them from going to that next level because it keeps them down on this—this level of playing field and doesn’t take them up into where they can go up to—do you see that quite often?
Arnold: Yes.
Rob: Because I’m assuming you would—
Arnold: Well, yeah, but—but it’s—it’s—like, if—well, it’s like—think about—think about marriage. There’s a—globally, it’s—it’s almost all the same. There’s a 50% divorce rate—one and two, yeah? Why is that? Because at some point in time, you—you’re really connected, and everything’s fine and nice or whatever, and then one goes in this direction and the other one goes in this direction, and you then you’re going like, “We’re not really connected anymore.” That is a normal thing. That is not something to worry about. It’s like, no, that’s because you grow, and the other person grows, or the other person stays flatline. Then at some point in time, you may like, “Oh, we’re not connected. There’s a gap.” So that—that is one—one—one—one proof of it.
The other one is like, the main influence on your happiness is other people, yeah? So imagine you’re still working, and you get a shitty boss. So—like, that—influences everything in your life, yeah? Or, when you had your previous wife telling you that you—you—you—you might need a mental health checkup.
Dean: So, like—
Arnold: There’s no connection anymore.
Dean: So it’s like—that was—that was all control. That was after the divorce. I was all—I was already—I was already read with—with somebody new, and she was too. That was all a control thing, but that—that’s a whole another topic.
Arnold: It sounds like a pattern. It’s always other people. It’s always other people.
Dean: So it—it—like, they have a huge influence. So if you want to grow and whatever, and—and other people are pulling you back, because that’s what happening, yeah? It’s like they—they pull you back, right?
Rob: Well, and it—there are plenty of other people in your next phase, right?
Arnold: So I—so I worked with a statistic—uh, data scientist person once that was inside of a room, and he had all these numbers wrote on a—on a board. And Dan—I don’t think I’ve ever told you this story, but I asked him what he was working on, and he goes, “Well, I—I’ve was told that the divorce rate is one and two. I’m about ready to get married for the first time, and I’m trying to figure out what my chances are, but I disagree with the number of one and two.” And I said, “Oh, God.” Well, all right. I asked the question, “What—what are you coming up with?”
He goes, “But I didn’t take into account for how many times a lot of people have been married. There’s people that have been married three, four, five times, and then you have this all in there.” And he was trying to figure out the number. He never got to the answer of what the real statistical number would be, but he was digging through all this data. It was before AI. This was probably 10 years ago. And he was like, “I just want to know the number, because I want to know what my chances are for this to be able to make it.” And I said, “I think you just have to let the universe be able to be in control of it, and I don’t think that whiteboard’s going to tell you.” But I mean, best of luck and let me know if you do come up with a number. And he goes, “I gave up on it. It was—that just pissed me off.” He goes, “I couldn’t figure out what it was.” So I was like, “Oh, there’s just some things you can’t put a number to.”
Arnold: And that’s part of the problem in society, and especially in business, like, “We got to have metrics and metrics. We cannot measure it, whatever,” is like, how do you measure your—your level of depression, your—your level of excitement, your level of enthusiasm? You—so I think the most important things in life, we cannot measure. You—so it’s—like, that is frustrating a lot of things, and—and it’s like, in anyway, it’s a good experience. You—so it’s like—so I—I say a lot of things, you got to try.
47:00 | Try Before You Dream
Arnold: Yeah, I’ve had many clients, and—and sometime I had a client who said, “Oh, but what did you love to do?” “I—I would love to have my own horse, and I could put in the stable, and I can work all day, and in the evening, I could feed it and—and—and take care of my horse, and then I could ride it, and in the weekend, I could ride in the forest with my horse.” I said, “That sounds really great. That sounds really nice.” Have you ever ridden a horse?
Rob: Nope.
Arnold: So—so it’s like—yeah, it’s like, why don’t you try? You might—might want to go ride a horse. You might enjoy it. By the way, I learned horse riding in my 30s. It’s not easy, and it—it sometimes it’s very inconvenient. Like, so that’s why I say to people, try it. Try it, you know? And if you like it, still pursue with it. But at least if you tried it, like, you got to go after another dream.
Dean: Yeah, no. Yes, so—so, Arnold, that story—my daughter wanted a horse when she was younger, and I said, “It’s a money pit.” They aren’t, because being healthy as a horse isn’t very healthy. The vet bills are through the roof, and I mean—but no, but that’s a—that’s a great analogy, though. I mean, you—before you pursue a dream, you—if you’ve never really experienced it, you need to go try it first and get yourself a—a taste of what you’re—where you think you want to go. That’s a great analogy.
Arnold: Yeah, but it’s true with everything. It’s like, I—I—I went into the startup world, and like, I didn’t know, yeah, and—and it’s really tough compared to a corporate role. But for some people, it’s the other way around, but like, at least I tried. I—at some point in time, because, uh, when—the corporate world—I had international responsibility, European, globally. I—in my time—well, there was no video conferencing yet. Like, yeah, I was in the plane most of the time, and—and—and at some point in time, I—like, I—I—like traveling all over the world. Me, I—I got international teams who I was managing, and I was like, “I would like to live in another country,” because just visiting and—and staying in a hotel and then—and then going back—is like, “Hey, I would like to live for a couple of reason—a lot of reasons.”
It didn’t happen, and then I totally ran out of money. And then with the—say, the Netherlands was like, “Oh, that’s such a good for social benefit system.” Well, it’s not. It’s like, yeah, and they told me, is like, “Arnold, you first got to consume your retirement fund.” But I said, “I’m not of the retirement age, so why should they use the money out of that fund?” “Well, you got to use that money because you’re not getting any social benefit from us.” “Oh, thank you very much. I paid for more than 50 years a fortune to taxes, and now it’s over.”
So I was so angry, and I said, “Now I’m going to leave the country. Now I’m going to do what I always wanted to do but never had the guts to do it.” And now I was so angry, he’s like, I did it, yeah? So I first went to Vietnam. I stayed two months in Ho Chi Min City. I totally disliked it. Then I ended—and then I ended up in—in Budapest, which I loved. Right now, I’m—because I had to go back for the last eight years to take care of my mother, but now I’m in Romania. I’d never been to Romania. It’s like, I—I never been to the country. I don’t know any people. I don’t speak the language. But still, I am here, and I’m loving it. Service like all of these things, you got to try, because maybe when I went to Budapest or whatever, I hate it, whatever. I got to stay in Netherlands. I tried it, but it’s not for me. But I experience, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know the answer, is like experience—like, I love living in another country.
Dean: I—I’ve never had that experience. No, I’ve only left the country once. I only went to Mexico, so I’ve never done anything like that. Kind of intrigues me in a weird—right?
Arnold: Yeah, it is—it challenge you at every level. So it—like, I’m really loving it.
Dean: Yes.
Arnold: So I’m already planning for other things, but like, but at least try it.
Rob: Well, if you don’t try it, you’ll never know if you like it.
Arnold: Yeah, it’s always an itch. Yeah, it’s like the itch which you never scratched.
Rob: Yeah, exactly. There you go. So, Arnold, if—what—who is your ideal person that would want—that you would say should contact you to be able to do it, and how would they contact you to be able to do your 15-week course and kind of learn about the whole brain gym and fitness and all that stuff for the brain?
53:00 | Who Should Join Brain Gym?
Arnold: Well, thank you very much. The—um, as people typically in a midlife crisis in the corporate world, were like, “Hey, I tried everything in the corporate world. My goal was to become the big boss, and it didn’t happen, and my marriage is not so good anymore, and I got trouble with my kids, and I’m like, what should I do the rest of my life?” So typical midlife crisis.
Another group of people, um, which is a whole different ballgame, is people who are, uh, caretakers of people with dementia or Alzheimer. Only when you talk about the US, you get six million people with dementia. So that means there are roughly 12-18 million people who are caretakers of them. That is really, really hard. It’s hard on them. It is—it is very, very hard. I did it myself for eight years without any help. Is it—like, it’s really tough, yeah? But you realize then two things, is like, you need to take care of your own health. Otherwise, you will end up in a worse place as well. And the other thing, I don’t need you to convince you about brain fitness, okay?
And the third category is—is—is typically, um, people who are into body fitness. So owners of gyms, owners of—of fitness club, because they are confronted with a lot of mental health issues where clients want to talk with them about, and they say, “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not trained for this to talk about the—with your girlfriend or any—any other problem. I just want to help you with your body and your food and your nutrition and your sleep. I can help you with it, but the rest of the stuff I want someone else to take care of it.” So we can be an affiliate, is like, “Hey, I do the brain fitness. You do the body f—and you earn some money if you send people my way.”
Rob: Perfect. I like it. Perfect. And where would they find—where would they find you in, uh—
Arnold: Simple. I—I have a website. It’s called braingym.fitness. Braingym.fitness. There they can find my training program. They can find, uh, some—some video classes with master classes around specific topics like emotions, habits, relationships, uh, uniqueness. So those are around 90 minute videos about the specific topic. Um, and if they still have question, they can book a meeting with me, and—and we can discuss what to do.
Rob: Perfect. Perfect.
54:30 | Final Thoughts and Thank You!
Dean: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. That was all—some really great information, and we—we—we wound you up a little bit, Arnold. I think—
Arnold: I really appreciate the information.
Rob: Yes, thank you so much for joining us today, and, uh, if anybody wants to be able to get in touch with you, now they know how to get in touch with you, and, um, we love it. So thank you so much. Have a great day, everyone.
Arnold: Thank you, guys.
