How to Think Like Einstein in Business | Jay Abraham

On this episode of Strategic Edge, business strategist Jay Abraham explores how entrepreneurs can adopt the thinking habits of Albert Einstein to improve decision-making, innovation, and performance. Abraham introduces the “Mindstein Effect,” a set of non-intellectual traits that help leaders expand perspective, challenge assumptions, and uncover opportunities others miss.

Rather than relying on raw intelligence, Abraham explains that breakthrough thinking comes from disciplined curiosity, cross-industry exploration, and questioning conventional wisdom. He shares practical ways to develop these habits, from studying unrelated fields to reframing problems and identifying root causes. By strengthening mental models and embracing nonlinear thinking, business leaders can gain a strategic edge, improve outcomes, and achieve more innovative, scalable growth.

Key discussion points:

•  The “Mindstein Effect” and its role in entrepreneurial success 
•  Why imagination and cross-industry thinking drive innovation 
•  The importance of questioning assumptions and identifying root causes 
•  How expanded mental models improve decision-making and strategy 
•  Practical ways to develop Einstein-inspired thinking habits 
•  Gaining asymmetric advantage through broader perspective and curiosity 

Transcript

Welcome And Big Question

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:32

Mr. Jay Abraham, welcome once again to the Strategic Edge with Jay Abraham right here exclusively on ASBN.com. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Jay Abraham 0:41

Jim, it is always a pleasure, and I love contributing, and I love the forum you're giving me because you have a very quality uh collection of viewers, and I think uh they're very impressive entrepreneurs.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:52

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more.

Einstein Without The IQ Myth

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:54

So, Jay, you talk about how Einstein's brilliance wasn't just about raw IQ. It was about how he thought. What specific mental habits or ways of approaching problems did Einstein use that entrepreneurs and leaders can realistically model in their own decision making and their own lives?

Jay Abraham 1:14

Great question. So a couple years ago, I was fascinated with everything other than his IQ. Because, you know, if he had a you know, a thousand IQ, we can't give you a thousand IQ, although there are ways to monumentally multiply the capability of your brain, and that's another discussion. But he had 10 very interesting attributes, character traits that I think any entrepreneur, any solo, any professional could embrace and add to as as arrows in their quiver. And it would be very, very powerful, and it would really open their business worldview and it would expand their mental model. So I'll go through them. We did a a really interesting session one time, and I called it the mindstein effect. Well, I tried to take, okay, here's Einstein's non-intellectual attributes, not his IQ. Right. And and it was in the mind. Most of it is all internally, because when you think about it, almost all of the realities we deal with are illusory. They're all here. They have nothing to do with what's out there.

Jim Fitzpatrick 2:21

Sure.

Jay Abraham 2:22

If you shift this, you shift that. You expand it, you demand you dimensionalize it, you you transcend wherever you think you can't go. And so let me go through some of them and just sort of riff a little bit, and you can ask me anything you want because I think these are fascinating. I think they're fun, but I think that it's almost a Trojan horse. If you start adapting and adopting these kind of elements, I think your performance can't help but grow, but in the most enjoyable way possible. And a lot of people who are just driven by grit and staying on point don't allow their brains to really do what it was set out to do, which is solve problems and basically create opportunities. So this is a fast-track, fun way to really dramatically blow up all the opportunities available to you.

Jim Fitzpatrick 3:12

Okay.

Jay Abraham 3:13

So, and in not necessarily in order, but in the order that I found them fascinating.

Imagination As A Business Weapon

Jay Abraham 3:18

First is imagination. He cultivated enormous imagination. He could envision possibilities, he could see combinations, he could basically extrapolate from one world to another. He was not limited by, let's say, the linear elements. He was able to really try to enjoy and understand what it would look like if it was like this, like that, call it a kaleidoscopic CAT scan point of view. And he was unlimited. He didn't care. He wanted to see all the different ways it might be sliced and diced and deconstructed and reconstructed. And because he had this fast worldview, because he'd been uh curious, and we'll get to that in a minute, he was able, much like I can, to say, well, what if you did it like this? What if you did it like that? And he would basically, I don't know if he did it on a on a board, on paper, in his mind, he would put all the options out there looking for the best one, the optimum option, if you will. And I think that everybody watching could do a version of that.

Jim Fitzpatrick 4:28

Yes, I completely agree. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Jay Abraham 4:31

And I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a mechanism because I think just linear explaining it isn't as powerful as giving you a way to start it. So there's a couple ways to do it.

Exercises To Expand Your Mind

Jay Abraham 4:41

First way is what I did accidentally to give me the strength and the breadth and the expertise I have. I became uh an accidental tourist, and by that I mean I was introduced to all these different industries trying to find uh you know success. And then I realized each one approached everything different than the others, and it opened my mind to all kinds of different possibilities, optionalities, uh, choices, combinations. I think everybody here should give themselves permission, Jim, at least an hour or more a week to travel outside their comfort zone. Yeah. Think about this. When you travel outside your uh geographic reality, it opens your mind. If you travel to another part of the country, there's different different climates, different uh foods. You travel outside of your continent, there's different temperatures, different morals, different, you know, different topography. When you travel outside your industry and you open your mind to just trying to understand all kinds of other elements, all kinds of other industries, all kinds of other forms of belief system, all kinds of other drivers of commerce, all kinds of other products and services, it gives your subconscious all these filaments that it can later weave together in very imaginative, very innovative uh combinations that your competitor would never think of. Also, uh what I what I used to do, I think I talked about this in one of our other sessions. We used to do very extensive, very expensive, very large seminars. And after the second day when people trusted us, we would find out, my staff would, I wouldn't, we'd find out what your real interest was. Let's say you had a hobby or your industry. So your industry is media. And I don't know if you have a hobby, your hobby is voting. I know that now. So we would basically go to the bookstores when they existed, get books and magazines on all kinds of subjects, and we would give you a book or a magazine on something totally the opposite. Uh, cake decorating, macro may, and we'd make you go outside for two hours, read two articles or two chapters, come back and give us one insight that flabbergasted you because you realized you could adapt a version of that to your business, and everybody did it. But on their own, nobody would have done it.

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:03

That's a great exercise.

Jay Abraham 7:05

Yeah. And I so I tell people to do things like that. Yeah. Force yourself to study for an hour or two, go online and find something just totally outside of your sure, totally get it. If you live in a city that has really uh uh a reasonable number of convention or or conference type hotels, and almost any decent one, it doesn't have to be big conference, it could be the meeting rooms, on a Saturday or an evening or a Sunday, or if you're you're uh you're you're off early, walk them and look at all the different businesses, industries, and then see if they'll let you sit in and just observe something that's way out of your comfort zone. Right. Because all these experiences are going beyond your conscious and your subconscious, sponge-like, is absorbing it. Yeah. And I'll give you a really interesting concept. There was a famous book on how to create great ideas. It was called a technique for creating ideas. I think we might have talked about it once. And it said your mind is designed to do all these things, solve problems, make opportunities possible, but it has to know what it's supposed to do. But the way it does it is it's to first study everything it can about the problem or the opportunity in the linear sense, and then study everything it can about everything else.

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:19

Yeah.

Jay Abraham 8:19

And what it does is it takes those two when you're not paying attention, when you're sleeping, when you're showering, when you're driving, when you're watching the game, and it synthesizes it together into fabulous breakthrough hybrids that you would never create on your own. So that's a concept for his first thing. Cultivate imagination, because breakthroughs are fueled by imagination. For the record, there are very few new ideas, even with uh technology. They're reassembling of existing things in new ways. They're hybrids. Your job is to turn your brain into a constant hybrid.

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:57

That's the first right, right, right.

Jay Abraham 8:59

The second, that's just one.

Question Assumptions And Reframe Problems

Jay Abraham 9:01

The second uh attribute I found really interesting from Einstein was he questioned everything. He didn't he questioned assumptions, he questions he questioned linear thinking, he questioned that what everybody did was the best way to do it, he questioned reality. He was always questioning in a Socratic way because he he realized what I realized that about half of the actions we take, the activities we we uh engage in are predicated on erroneous assumptions. Yeah, Tony Robbins and I, I think I may have talked about this before. I'm a little redundant. We do every year, one day together, a very high-level problem solving and opportunity mining to his high-end audience. And because Tony is this you know seven-foot dominant, you know, very, very, and I'm this, you know, five, six and a half, uh non-dominant force, he always goes first. So he answers and the best he can, and he contextualizes, then it's my turn. And I say, before I'll answer anything, I need to first verify the assumption that two different sides are making. The first is the assumption that the question or the problem or the opportunity is being predicated on, because if the person posing it is is erroneous in how he or she is understanding it, is believing it, is seeing it, everything that flows from that is going to be uh wrong. And then are we understanding what he is asking of us? And then is he asking us to solve a symptom or a cause? So I'm giving you us, maybe I hope this doesn't give give people headaches. I'm just trying to take it on and into a more depth of understanding.

Jim Fitzpatrick 10:50

Sure, sure. Which is kind of my next question on that. So you talk about the mindset effect. How does the way we frame a problem, and you touched on a little bit, determine the quality of the solution we eventually arrive at?

Jay Abraham 11:04

Well, let's look at uh at uh at standard sort of default framing. When we have a problem, typically, if you and I'm not a psychologist and I'm not a neuroscientist, but I've helped a ton of them, you're going to process it through the limited knowledge experiential base you have. Right. Right? Right. And most likely you're going to process it through a status quo type of a lens, don't you think? Yes, yes, no question about it. Because a lot of your thought is pr is forged by what you've seen or what you have done that is duplicative of what your industry does.

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's no question.

Jay Abraham 11:46

And if you've only spent your life in one or two industries, that's the scope of the reference you're going to have, other than you know, you're outside. Now, if you're a member of uh colla collaborative groups, and you and I have talked about creating some just for that purpose to help people. And if you're if you're somebody that reads obsessively, but reading isn't really doing. I believe you got to do, because when you do, it becomes real. It it penetrates past the outer periphery and and the deflectors that your psych at your psyche erects, and it gets right to the core of where it resonates and opens the windows of possibility in your mind.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:23

Yeah.

Jay Abraham 12:24

But I think everybody should study uh Socrates and really master two things Socratic questioning and uh and uh and uh related listening. Nobody knows how to listen really with depth to really understand what's being said, to project yourself into that reality, to ask clarifying questions, to acknowledge that you heard. And all this is going to be part of this this the fabric we're trying to discuss today, because I think each of these ten elements is another, it's another thread that gets woven into the uh design of the fabric. It's called your brain.

Jim Fitzpatrick 13:07

It is, it is. Uh for someone who feels that they're they're not naturally brilliant, and we're talking about obviously Einstein here, what's the single most powerful practice um that they can adopt from Einstein's approach that could immediately elevate the way they solve problems or or create value?

Outthinking For Exponential Advantage

Jay Abraham 13:28

So if you think about competition, and most of us are talking about entrepreneurs or CEOs or professionals, but even if you work for somebody, you're new, you're gonna compete. You're gonna compete against other people, you're gonna compete in terms of the perception of value your employer sees, you're gonna compete uh in terms of of promotions, and if you're gonna do that, you don't you don't win by thinking, you win by out thinking. So you outthink by expanding your worldview. If I know, so here's a concept, and I'm gonna take it from a different world and I'll try it. So I I've used this before. If you know 99 ways to say no, and I know a hundred ways to get you to say yes in a selling situation, as long as long as I keep you in discussion, I'm gonna win. Well, that's right. If everybody you compete against, whether it's business to business or job, knows a certain number of realities, and you know three or four times that, it's not linear, it's asymmetric, it's an exponential advantage in thinking.

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:38

That's a very good point.

Jay Abraham 14:40

Does that make sense?

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:41

It totally makes sense. It really does. You spent decades studying how top performers think. When you compare Einstein's approach to thinking with the way great entrepreneurs operate, what are the similarities that stand out the most? So you've done, I mean, you you've you've met so many incredible entrepreneurs and and highly successful people in your journey over the decades. Talk to us about that.

Jay Abraham 15:05

I mean, there's gonna be many profiles, but the ones that would uh align the best to what we're talking about are the ones that go out of their way with regularity and discipline to gain uh gain uh audiences, familiarity, meetings, uh, interaction with people way outside their world. They want to see what's out there.

Jim Fitzpatrick 15:26

Yeah.

Jay Abraham 15:26

They want to understand what they don't know, they want to understand things that people have taken to sublime, they want to meet everything out there that is outside of whatever their business or their or their personal reality is because they know that that's how breakthrough thinking happens. That's how you stop being uh calcified or or uh static. And the brain has the capacity to operate at a much higher level than we normally allow it, but we really don't mean it. We operate, we operate, we fuel it with grit, but we but we put a governor on the engine. Does that make sense?

Jim Fitzpatrick 16:06

Yes. Yes. And that and that stunts our growth, right?

Jay Abraham 16:11

Yeah. Well, it also stunts our competitive superiority. Because if all you do is what everybody else does, and all you understand is what everybody else understands, plus or minus 10, 15% incrementally, you can't possibly engineer explosive exponential performance. You can't.

Jim Fitzpatrick 16:30

That's right. That's right.

Jay Abraham 16:31

But when you're not, when you're thinking in terms that they don't, when you're seeing opportunity leverage points, uh different ways of doing being accessing, uh uh communicating to your market, motivating your your prospects to buy, your people to uh outperform. Now you've got this powerful advantage, and it's really, it's delectably, it's it's exhilarating because every part of it, when you suspend your limited uh point of view, it's discovery on steroids. I mean, uh you get the advantage in what you do in both your platforms. You have this one, you have the automotive, you're interviewing all kinds of people, you're interviewing breakthrough thinkers, you're interviewing new technology, you're interviewing new experts that have looked at a at a segment of business or or a dealership in ways you haven't. It's gotta be stimulating as heck.

Jim Fitzpatrick 17:22

It is. There's no question about it. I get to talk to people, amazing people like you.

Jay Abraham 17:28

But there's no reason, Jim, that everybody watching can't do their version of that on a continuous disciplined way.

Jim Fitzpatrick 17:36

Sure, sure.

Jay Abraham 17:37

And if they do, when they look back, it's gonna be like a bullet train. In the beginning, it's gonna be it's gonna be non, it'll be almost a non-u-relevant event. And they're gonna look back after doing it disciplined over weeks or months, and they're gonna see their their growth and their understanding and their the way they look at everything from competing from from uh selling from sourcing from motivating from managing. It's just gonna keep rising at almost gonna rocket against their competitor because their competitor is thinking basically, they're thinking standard operating procedure, they're thinking best practices, they're thinking linear, they're thinking basically very, very much the same way everyone else does. And you're not, it just opens up enormous possibility and it's and it's intoxicating in its positivity. You'll you'll love starting to do it. That's my conclusion.

Final Takeaways And Sign Off

Jim Fitzpatrick 18:36

That's incredible, as simple as that. Jay Abraham with the Strategic Edge exclusive right here at SBN.com. Thank you so much for once again joining us and sharing all of your insights and your incredible mind, your Einstein type mind, and how it applies to business and how others can benefit from it. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Very much appreciate it. I know that our viewers and subscribers get a lot out of your visits with us here today. So thanks so much, and I look forward to the next time together. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 19:10

Thanks for watching Strategic Edge with Jay Abraham, exclusively on ASBN.