7 Steps to Activate Your Heroic Potential with Brian Johnson

Brian Johnson, it is so good to see you, brother.

Hal Elrod, always great to see you, brother.

First of all, you just took a sip of mountain valley spring water, which.

That's.

That's my. That's my jam. So we're just another thing we have in common.

You know what? And this is a mountain valley water spring or spring water bottle filled with some other water that we probably also get delivered to our houses in Austin. If not, I'll have to give you the pro tip on that. My wife gets us whatever we've got, but yes, hook me up.

I. I'm a. I'm admittedly a water snob.

Yeah, you and I both, dude.

So here we go. So we had you on. It was funny. I was just looking, right. And I. We. You were on episode 124 years ago on this podcast. And then you came back for episode 405, which was probably about a year or a year and a half ago. And, and the reason I'm having you on today, it's very specific. It. Well, actually, there's a lot of reasons, I guess underneath the beast. But the reason being that you have a new book that is just came out for pre order. It's activate your heroic potential. Ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools to win the ultimate game and fulfill your destiny. First, I just have to insert that you and I both have an affinity for obnoxiously long subtitles.

It's okay to be long. It's not okay to be boring. I've been told.

Yeah, so mine's the not so obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life before 8am Right?

You got me beat by a number of syllables.

I don't know. I'm actually. When the episode's over, I'm gonna do a count. I'm gonna do an official account. Man. So you pivoted, I met you, and I have to tell the story. I probably told this. We met before, but for people who don't know, I was a huge fan of yours. I'm still. I mean, I'm still a huge fan of yours, but I used to read your philosopher's notes. Right, the PDFs. I was. I was a paying member and I used to watch your videos on YouTube where you would like, bring the philosopher notes to life. For those that don't know, philosopher notes are Brian's version on book summaries. But Brian is just extremely, you know, you're. You're just brilliant. And so you were able to make what I thought were the best book summaries that I'D ever seen. And, and I was at a conference and my best friend Matt was there with me. And he goes, dude, did you see that Brian Johnson did a philosopher's Note video on YouTube for the Miracle morning. I'm like, shut up. You know, and he brings me the phone and show. I'm like, no way. Like, I was so blown away by that, man. So first of all, thank you for that. I, you know, thank you, man. It means a lot.

Dude, you're amazing. I appreciate everything you just said, the way you said it and I've shared with you, but one of my big investors said, you have to read this book. So I read it. I'm like, I got a new soul brother here. Do the note. And then we connect and just small world. I appreciate you and all your support over the years. And I think it's one of the reasons why we're so connected, you know, I mean, we're just saying the same thing in different ways. And the same mission as we were talking about, you know, articulated differently, but all at the essence, basically exactly the same.

Let's actually start with your mission that, since you just mentioned, that's a really great place to start. And I've got that. Your mission is to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051. What does that mean? And why is that your mission?

Yeah, that's great. And then I don't need to look forward to see that mission. So I tattooed my body with our, our heroic kind of logo and then on the top of it, heroic a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051. So the joke is, you know, research shows that if you write down your goals, you have like a 43% higher likelihood of achieving them. Most people write it on a post it note, put it on their bathroom mirror. I'm like, I'm going to put it somewhere I can't miss. But the 51, 2051 is actually the moonshot goal with which Marty Seligman launched the positive psychology movement. So a friend of mine named James Pawelski was a young philosopher in the year 2000 and he was facilitating meetings with Marty and their colleagues and he said, hey, we should have a moonshot goal for our movement. This is right before the positive psychology movement was really, you know, founded. Apparently Marty, you know, he is a self proclaimed curmudgeon, kind of pooh poohed the idea we don't need a moonshot goal. Then the next morning he showed up and said, I Figured it out. And James said, what? I figured out our moonshot goal. We need to do the academic research to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051. Even when I say that, I get goosebumps. But the first time that I heard that, I'm like, that's insane. I'm an ambitious guy, but that's crazy. And I still think it's crazy. But I also think it's exactly right in terms of a really, really bold, audacious goal to which I've dedicated my life. And again, we're not going to single handedly do that, obviously, but can we humbly yet heroically play our roles well to, to help create that world? And that's what it means for me and what I'm so fiercely committed to doing everything I can to help support, create.

You know what I love about that? And I want to ask you to define what it means to flourish in a second so people can really, including me, understand what that mission means for 51% flourishing. But what I want to point out is that really shows a. It shows where your ego is in check in that you tagged on to somebody else's mission that you believed in, right? Most leaders don't do that, right? They go, it's gotta be my own. I've gotta be the man, I've gotta be the head of this. I've gotta be the leader. And that just stood out for me right there when you mentioned it. Right. Like most people wouldn't be like, my life's mission wasn't actually invented by me. I actually found someone else's mission that I really believed in and I wanted to play a small part in it, right? And I think that's it. Like, no single person is gonna single handedly change the world, right? We just, we all have to do our part. And actually I, and I'll just, I'll just mention this, but that's what I like about your heroic mission. You know, in your intro of the book, you talk about that like, everyone's a hero and we need people to step into their heroic self now more than ever before. So before we get into that, I just, I don't want to skip past the. What does it mean for 51% of humanity? Flourishing. What does flourishing mean? Like, you got drinking water, you got food?

Like, what does that mean again? Goosebumps, dude. Love everything you just framed and all the things that will come out of how you just frame that up. So in the book, the first objective is you got to know the ultimate game because we've been seduced to play the wrong game. We think. And again, we don't really think this, but we've been seduced to believe that all the extrinsic stuff, the fame, the wealth, the hotness, the Instagram followers, and all the other things that just don't lead to happiness are the essence of a good life. But what I try to explain by integrating ancient wisdom and modern science is that we got to know the ultimate game. So flourishing.

This is how I frame it up. So I imagine, okay, look, what do all the great ancient wisdom, philosophers, religious wisdom, traditions have to say? And what does modern science have to say about the ultimate purpose of life? So I playfully say, let's invite Aristotle and Martin Seligman to the party. Aristotle as a proxy for ancient wisdom, and Martin Seligman is a proxy for modern science. And we ask him a simple question. What's the purpose of life? Easy question, right?

So then I playfully say in the first chapter, they look at each other with a little wink, you know, a twinkle in their eye. And then Aristotle says, well, look, I'll answer you in one word, the summum bonum. The greatest good of life is to live with what he calls eudaimonia. Now that's an ancient Greek word, eudaimon. It means good soul. To have a good soul. Right, Interesting, right? We translate that into English roughly and imperfectly as happiness. But the real meaning of the word is. And then we look at Martin Seligman, what do you think? And he holds up the COVID to his most recent book, which is called Flourish. So ancient wisdom and modern science agree that the ultimate purpose of life is to flourish. And again, what does that mean? It means essentially to show up as the best version of yourself in service to something bigger than yourself. But then the follow on question to the ancient wisdom and modern science guys is, well, how do you do that? Nice and warm and fuzzy. Still don't really know what you mean, but how do I actually do that? And then they give you the exact same answer again. So I tattooed my body on this arm with Aristotle's single word answer to how you flourish or become a good soul, which is arete, which we translate into English as virtue or excellence. But the way that I describe it is in any given moment, you're capable of being this person. And if you're actually being this person, and there's a gap in that gap, you have regret, anxiety, disillusionment, depression. If you close the gap and you express the Best version of yourself. If you live with Arete in this moment, there's no room for regret, anxiety, disillusionment. You feel eudaimonia, you feel this deep sense of flourishing, that you're doing what you're here to do. And that's a moment to moment to moment experience. You don't need to wait a decade. The moment you live with Arete, I say you are heroic. You've expressed the best version of yourself. Then the challenge is how do you do that more and more consistently? And the positive psychology movement was founded on virtue. It literally is the essence of everything. They studied all the ancient wisdom traditions, all of which said the exact same thing in their own cultural nuanced way. Live with wisdom. They call it temperance, but it's really self mastery. Live with courage and live with love. If you can do that, you'll create a great life and you'll feel great. You'll win the ultimate game. So that's literally the first objective of the book. And that changes lives the moment you get that in a really grounded, practical, ancient wisdom, modern science, everybody agrees way. It's been very transformative for the people that we've been able to affect.

That's. I'm, I'm. We keep saying this to each other, but I'm so inspired by that the, you know, so I read a book. Did you read the Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly by chance?

Oh my God. Matthew Kelly is one of my all time favorites.

I'm hoping that like one day I'm gonna stump you on a book.

Collection. See if I have any obscure books that I don't. I'm gonna pull off like most obscure books. See if I can stump. There should be a game. Stump Brian Johnson. Can you find a book he hasn't read? But, but Matthew Kelly, right in the Rhythm of Life says the purpose of life is to become the best version of yourself and then, and then in service of others so that you can help them become the best version of themselves. And for me I kind of translate it as like, okay, so my mission is to fulfill my potential so that I then become knowledgeable and experienced and co qualified and capable of helping other people fulfill their potential. Right. And so everything that we're saying is lots of different words describing the same thing.

You, I want to touch, I want to, I want to unpack heroic a little bit and the word hero and just that like, let's just ask it this way. You could have called this book anything. And I know as, as an author titling a book It's a big deal, right? It's like, that's, like that. It's. It's what's going to determine whether or not somebody is interested enough to pick up the book and open it up. You titled this book Activate youe Heroic Potential. Why did. Why is that the title? What does that mean to you?

Yeah, I mean, there's. There's two really big words in there. Activate and heroic. But to step back. And you kind of hinted at this, but let's define hero really quickly because it's important, because hero is not someone other than you. It's not someone that you. You admire. A historical figure or some really world fam. Person that, oh my God, wouldn't it be cool to be them? But we never could be. And the way that I like to frame it is I ask people, do you know what the word hero actually means? So no one's known the answer to that question except the person who taught me it, which is Christopher McDougall in Natural Born Heroes. So in ancient Greece, when they were coming up for a word for hero, they didn't pick a word that meant tough guy or killer of bad guys or anything like that. The word they chose, literally, etymologically, means protector. So a hero is a protector. A hero has strength for two. And a hero's secret weapon is love. So my whole thing is. And I have goosebumps, I say this, you know, we each are called to be the hero of our own lives. And when you look at what's going on in the world today, with all of the, you know, we're recovering from COVID we've got pandemic levels of anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, political polarization, environmental degradation, et cetera. And historically significant challenges demand historically significant responses from each of us. So we each need to step up and do the hard work to create that strength for two such that we can protect and be a hero for our families, for our communities, for the values in which we believe. So that's the essence of hero and heroic, that we each within us have the heroic potential that we just need to activate. So activation energy is a scientific concept. So if you want to boil water, for example, nothing happens until you reach an activation energy point of 212 degrees. As you know very well, if you want to make a fire and you're rubbing two sticks together, you got your little. Whatever thing you're doing to make fire, nothing happens. At 200 degrees, 300 degrees, 400 degrees, 425 even 450 degrees, you have to get to an activation energy point of 451 degrees. But then when you do, everything changes. One thing becomes another thing. So my thing is we each need to activate that potential that is latent within each of us. And that requires a level of intensity and a requirement, a level of commitment that in our modern culture just isn't cool. You know, it's like cooler to be cynical and to be slightly critical of everything. And we want to be mindful and deliberate and obviously grounded. But we've also got to be willing to activate that potential within ourselves, as you beautifully said, in service to something bigger than ourselves. Then the hero who gets a guide in the beginning of their quest, Harry Potter got Dumbledore, right? And then they get buddies, Hermione and Ron. But then the hero conquers their own dragons and then they return as the guide. And that's the ultimate quest. Well, we become our best selves so we can help others become their best selves. And that, to me, is how we change the world. Literally one person at a time together. Starting with you and me and everyone who's listening to this now and not someday, but today. So that, that's the essence of, of what I was thinking about with the title.

Well said. And yeah, not someday, but today. Like, that's. We. We are, I feel like humanity, you know, and this is a rabbit hole. I don't know that we would go. Go deep down, but. Right. Humanity is. We're at a crossroads. I, like, I. I believe that right now we are needed. And, and there's a lot with, you know, when you study the fall of empires and societies as you know, you know, Margaret Wheatley has a new book that came out yesterday called who Do we choose to Be? That's about that. And then Ray Dalio has recently covered that a lot. Right. But a lot of really smart people are studying that. Hey, no. Society thrives forever. And. Yeah. So. So I love, I think that your work, this book, the timing of it is, you know, I mean, the best time to read it was yesterday. The next best time is when it comes out on. Is it November 17th is when it actually arrives.

You're amazing. November 7th and amen. Let's go. Awesome.

I'll be done by the 17th then. Okay, cool. I know one of the concepts that you talk about is what you call antifragile confidence. What is that? And how do we forge it?

Oh, that's so good. And the objective in the chapter title is so objective. One is you got to know the ultimate game. So once we know the ultimate game. We've been seduced to play the wrong one. We try to create a good life instead of create a good mood, as the Stoics say, Right? Then the next step is you. You gotta forge antifragile confidence. So we activated your potential in objective one. We do a lot of exercises to get you to wake up and to realize this isn't a dress rehearsal. What are you waiting for? But then a forge. You gotta go from 451 degrees to 20, 120, 200 degrees, truly forge your consciousness. And the phrase that I use is antifragile confidence. And rule number one of objective two of a good heroic life is, it's supposed to be hard. And this is what we've been seduced to believe. We've been seduced to play the wrong game, which is to accumulate the cars and the houses and the initials after our name. And then we've been told it should be easy. And if it's not easy, you're doing it wrong. You combine those two things, and you've got some issues. And again, there's a deep science around intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation we won't go into. But I like to talk about antifragility, which is a word I borrowed from Nassim Taleb, who wrote a book about antifragility in the context of, like, institutions and financial markets and things like that. But basically, you can either be fragile, resilient, or something that's the opposite of fragile, which is antifragile. Most people think it's, you're either fragile or resilient. So the idea here is this. Imagine you're a package being shipped in the mail. If you're fragile, you write, handle me with care. I'll break. And when life hits you, you break. You're like a fragile glass. Now, if you're resilient, you can get kicked around, and then you break, and then you bounce back. But the question is, what's the opposite of fragile? Because there's an opposite to it. What if on the same box, you said to life, kick me around? Literally, throw me around, because the more you kick me around, the stronger I get. That's antifragility. Now, then the question is, well, how do you create that? And I say you need a deep sense of confidence. And I'm kind of an etymological nerd, right? So confidence in Latin is confidere. I'm also superpower. Mispronouncing it. That's probably not how you say it in Latin. But Confidere, right? Means intense trust. So you want to have intense trust in what? That everything will go perfectly? Of course not. That's insane. You want to have intense trust that it doesn't matter what happens. You have what it takes to respond to that with a mental toughness. Now then, the follow on question to that is, how do you build trust in yourself? And the answer to that is, you build trust in yourself the same way trust is built in any relationship. You have to do what you say you will do. So if you have a relationship with someone and they say they're going to do something and they don't do it, do you trust them? Do you have confidence in them? Of course not. So if you say you're going to get up and have a miracle morning and you're going to do this, this and this. Goosebumps. You do it for a day. Second day you're ah, that's not so fun, right? And then the third day you're like, I forgot, I even committed to that. Let me forget about that. You shouldn't have confidence in yourself. You shouldn't trust yourself. But if you're the type of person who does what you say you will do, never perfectly, but more and more consistently, especially when you don't feel like it. So when you get knocked around, rather than spiral out into vicious behaviors, you, you use those moments to actually work your protocol with a deeper level of intensity. Then you can forge antifragile confidence. And then literally the more you get knocked around, the more deeply you deepen your practice and the stronger you get. And again, even improving that by 2, 5, 10% is life changing. That's how I approach mental toughness and consistency and antifragile confidence.

What, what's something that, like, give an example of a time when you were knocked down, when you were kicked, when you were right. And, and, and then, and then something you got through. Like, I'd love a real life example. Yeah, let's go in your childhood or recently or whatever.

No, I'll go. Dude. So, so heroic. We're a public benefit corporation and we were blessed to be supported by our community. So we made crowdfunding history. We were the first company to ever raise $5 million from our community as part of a $10 million seed round. Literally we had 3,000. Well now we have 3,000 investors from 75 countries around the world who gave us 10 million. Now $15 million to go build a social training platform. Longer chat.

So sorry for you, but I'm sure this is going to Take a turn.

Oh, this is going to be good. Then I hire. As you know, I hired a company called Metalab, the same company that built Slack, Tinder, Uber Eats, and Elon Musk's new Neuralink. You still don't feel bad for me? Life is happening. This is exciting, right? I feel like I'm fulfilling my dharma. This is what I'm here to do. We work for a year, literally for a year straight. Two days before we're launching our app, Goosebumps, that we worked insanely hard to build. We put $10 million into building. It's April 9, we're launching. We've got hundreds of our investors coming. I'm livestreaming to, like, 10,000 people on Saturday. On Wednesday night, I tell my wife, for the first time ever, I'm going to enjoy this weekend. I'm usually pretty high strung when I give big talks, you know what I mean? And I don't enjoy it until it's done. But this, I was ready. The app was good, it was working, people were happy, et cetera. So Wednesday night, I say, honey, I'm going to enjoy this weekend. Thursday morning, my team's out at the ranch. We live close to one another. We're hanging out, we're excited. The UPS driver pulls up, and I'm buddies with him. Hey, Wes, what's up? You know, little micro moment of awesome there, etc. He says, hey, that's great. Little skinny envelope. I look at it, heroic legal department. My heart skips a beat. I'm like, we got a great legal team. We don't have a legal department. Okay. I wonder what that was all about. I zip open the little letter. Letterhead. United States securities and Exchange Commission. Now, I'm pretty sure the combination of a legal department and the United States Security and Exchange isn't a winning formula. My team's in my kitchen. I bring it in. I go to the island, you know, and I'm looking at it, I'm reading it. I was, as I like to playfully say, hoping for a letter of commendation from the securities and Exchange Commission for being the first to ever do what they changed their legislation to do. Instead, they opened an inquiry into our business. So, not what I was looking for. That was not in the playbook, etc. Now, to make this story slightly shorter, in that moment, I don't remember this, but my right hand guy, Michael, told me that the first words out of my mouth after I practiced my philosophy and did My thing was, Mr. Balshan, the heroic gods have given us an opportunity to practice our philosophy. Now, the old me would have crumbled in that, what do I do? Oh my God. The new me said, perfect, this is an energy bar. I'm going to practice my philosophy at the highest possible level. Now, we had done everything at the highest moral and technical level, so I wasn't stressed on that. But then we couldn't raise the money we had. So here's where the problems come in. I had a fifteen million dollar round in. I had five million dollars committed in the bank. I was the biggest client for our partner. $6 million contract that's dependent on me raising the money that I had two weeks, you know, I was going to be raising the next round anyway. Long story slightly shorter. Couldn't raise the money for reasons outside of our control. Had to restructure my partnerships, had to let go of a bunch of people. And in the whole process, my mantra to myself was, I'm going to practice my philosophy at the highest possible level. The worse I feel, the more committed I am. And in the process, we forged an antifragile business. I became a better human being, a better man, a better leader through the challenges that we faced. So that's a. I can give you a million other examples, but that's a very life changing one for me. And then fast forward to the end of it. The law firm that we hired, who navigated the process with us in eight months, usually takes 24, hired me to keynote their partner meeting for 250 partners. Because they'd never seen anybody go through the process the way our team did.

Wow.

Because we were committed to practicing these ideas. So final thing, this is a Phil Stutz inspired idea. So Phil Stutz is my seven year long beloved coach. I've done 400 coaching sessions with him over seven years. He's in Jonah Hill's Netflix documentary called Stutz. He calls it emotional stamina. And he told me early on that you got to get to a point where the worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. Most people, when they feel bad, whether it's something as big as what that was or someone cuts them off on the way to work, they spiral out. But you gotta get to the point where the worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. Which begs the question, what do you do when you're at your best? What's your protocol? And do you work it when it matters most? Anyway, I've said a lot, but there's an example that was transformative for me that hopefully shed some light on the Concept.

Yeah. And that story reminds me of what a great philosopher of my youth said, which is a notorious big said. Mo money, mo problems. And so you think that having $10 million in the bank is easy, but it's like, dude, when you. I mean, seriously, though. But I. I know that, like, as my business has grown, the stakes grow, the stress goes, the pressure goes. You're like, you literally, it's almost like the more money you, you know, you start having to, you know, deal with in your. In your business life or whatever life. It's. I feel like I. I go back to being a little kid, and I go, dude, I don't know what I'm doing. I, like. I don't know. You know, I don't know. I've got this investor or this or that, and it's like, this is really scary. Like, who. I think imposter syndrome shows up. So, yeah, man, good on you.

But what's so fun is that. And this becomes the moment where the hero and you've spiraled up. So you do actually have the power to deal with bigger challenges. But two of my mentors, Phil, said, you're facing real bullets. I'm so happy for you. Finally, we get to deal with real problems. Now. Another buddy of mine is an investor and sat on boards with Elon Musk. His. He laughed at me. He's like, you're in the big boy gym now. You're lifting real weights. But most of us want to go through life as another mentor of mine, Steve Chandler, said, lifting styrofoam weights, we want to avoid problems and challenges. It's like going to the gym and lifting Styrofoam. So rule number one is it's supposed to be hard. And your story that it should be easy is what's getting you in trouble. So when you embrace your challenges, psychologists say you want to approach life. Don't avoid your challenges, approach them. Then you say, bring it on. And you truly see that your infinite potential exists outside of your comfort zone. By definition, when you leave your comfort zone, you feel uncomfortable, but then you want to reverse your desire and get excited about the challenges. And again, this is. You can apply that at the smallest level or the biggest level, but that's. That's from my vantage point, one of the keys to heroic living.

Yeah. Beautiful. So I want to. I'll frame this when I record the intro, but I realized that I didn't frame it up until this point. For anybody listening what we're covering today, these are the seven objectives to activate your Heroic potential. So objective number one is know the ultimate game. Objective number two is forge antifragile confidence. And then, Brian, let's unpack Objective 3, which is to optimize your energy, work, and love, which you call those the big three.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. And, and again, briefly on this one. Stephen Covey was my first, you know, favorite author, first book I ever read, 7 Habits of Highly effective. Yeah. And, you know, he's got roles and goals. He tells you a good life, you got to identify your roles and the goals. Tony Robbins adapted that in his own way. He calls them categories of improvement, all the different areas you want to improve. Now, for me, as a young man, when I tried to do that, I got overwhelmed very quickly because there's so many things I do and so many things I want to do that I would start and then stop. Freud, with whom I don't agree on many things, said a good life comes down to work in love. And when I heard that, I'm like, that's exactly right. That's at least 80% of a good life. Work in love. But then I said, but if your energy sucks because of poor lifestyle choices, good luck showing up in your work and your love. And then the big three was born. Energy, work, and love. And so our whole philosophy is simplify self development, simplify your life. If you can get your energy dialed in and then show up in your work and in your love at a high level, you can achieve what you want to achieve. And then we go through certain things to help you get clarity on who you are at your best in energy, work, and love, what virtues you embody, and then most importantly, what specific things you do. So when you and I are at our best, we do certain things. I get a certain number of hours of sleep, I eat a certain way, I move a certain way. Obvious things. But we got to take our prior best and make it our new baseline, which is a Josh Waitzkin phrase. So whenever you've achieved a level of success, don't give up those gains. Get clear on what you do when you're at your best, and then do that. And then you get really curious about just how great you can be anyway. We systematically help people get clarity on their identities, virtues, and behaviors in their energy, work, and love. In the third objective.

I love the holisticness of this book. That. Right, that if, like that you're walking us through objective by objective, step by step, and I'm just seeing how each one builds on and supports and complements the one previous.

The fourth objective is to make today a masterpiece. And, you know, I always say, like, make every day the best day of your life, because there's no reason not to. So how do we do that? How do we make today a masterpiece?

Well, the first thing is to. And again, this is why you and I are brothers. You got to take it seriously. Today's the day. You know, so a lot of people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't feel like it today. Or I'll get to that. But no, no. Today's the only day, obviously we ever have. But today's the day to move from theory to practice to mastery. And so here, there's a lot we can talk about, but I'm all about getting clarity on what your masterpiece day looks like. But the first thing is you got to recognize the importance of that. Live in what Dale Carnegie would call daytight compartments. Whatever happened yesterday happened. Whatever's going to happen tomorrow is going to happen. But how do you make today, as you would say, the best day of your life? And then we talk about bookends, AM and pm. And one of my big distinctions that I like to share is today started yesterday. How you ended your day yesterday directly impacts. And it's obvious, but you got to. We need to get really clear on the fact that staying up late, eating late, binge watching Netflix, getting an hour or two or three less sleep than you know you need. Good luck having a great day tomorrow. So paradoxically, your PM counts twice, I like to say the night before. And tonight you get two pms in one day. So you want to get your PM bookends dialed in, and then that leads to high energy in the morning. Then you just do what Hal Elrod tells you to do and make it a miracle morning. And then, boom, you've won the day. And then you go through your day, and then you end it strong so you can repeat the next day. It's always day one and all those things.

And again, this is why we're brothers. Because I say miracle morning starts the night before with a miracle evening. Right? Yeah.

Amen.

I love it. All right, so we talk about mastering the day, and then objective five is master yourself. And what's your take on this? Your perspective?

Yes, I think there's an art in science. Here I have two different frames. One, willpower, self mastery, discipline, whatever you want to call it out, predicts everything by a huge factor. So kids, for example, if you want to know which kid's going to do best in a classroom, and you knew two Things their IQ and their willpower quotient. Which one do you think would predict their success better than the other? Their IQ or their willpower?

Willpower.

But most people are going to intuitively say.

Most people would say iq.

Yeah, the smart kids, of course. You know, us and anyone who's thought about this deeply. But most people think, well, smart kids do better in school. Yeah, but it's not true. Of course, they have a certain advantage from an intellectual perspective. But willpower out predicts IQ by a factor of two, not 2% or 5% by a factor of two. Now, I shared that with.

Statistically, this isn't just in theory.

No, this is. Yeah, this is a Martin Seligman cited stat. You know, and, and, and by the way, very importantly, it's teachable. So in this objective, we talk about how to use your willpower wisely to install habits that run on autopilot via algorithms. And I integrate James Clear's atomic habits, you know, BJ Fogg's tiny habits, a lot of your stuff. You got great wisdom on that, such that your basal ganglia gets programmed and it's harder to do anything but the right thing. But then I also bring in some more Phil Stutts wisdom here. He says there are three types of discipline. Structural, reactive, and expansive. So structural discipline is your masterpiece day. You know that a good day starts like this, goes like that, ends like that. That's structural discipline. You got to take the time to get clarity on it and then execute it. The second discipline is reactive discipline. This is a Viktor Frankl idea. Viktor Frankl says that between a stimulus and. And a response, there's a gap. In that gap is your freedom. That's a discipline. When you feel triggered, can you choose a better response? That's a reactive discipline. We talk about that a lot. And then the third discipline is expansive discipline. This is basically courage. So when you feel fear, when you feel overwhelmed, when you feel like pulling back, when you know you should go forward, you want to expand into your infinite potential by leaning into your challenges. Bring it on, all those things. So in the objective, we do the, the structural, the reactive, and the expansive discipline and really make it concrete. I mean, there's very specific things that James does a great job articulating in atomic habits, and BJ of course, does as well. But there are ways to install habits very easily, and there are ways to delete habits very easily that you want to get really good at. That we talk about in the book. And the playful thing is become a ninja at installing and Deleting habits at will.

Yeah. And it's one of, if not the most important skill to master. And it is a skill, Right. If you can master your habits, if you can become a habit ninja, as you call it, there's nothing you can't do or create or achieve or change. Right. But I think it's that story that people have which is like, I'm just not disciplined. And it's because of what you said in the beginning, which is they've broken their own trust. And so what I love about this book is it's going to help people rebuild that trust, build that discipline. Right. To activate their heroic potential. I mean, it all makes so much sense now. You talk. Objective number six is dominate the fundamentals. What does it mean to dominate the fundamentals? How do we do it?

Yep. So then, at this stage in the book, hopefully we've cultivated some wisdom. We understand what the game is. We're forging antifragile confidence. We've got a protocol in our big three. We know how to make today a masterpiece. We know how to master ourselves via the disciplines. Then we go deeper, we step back again, and then we look at the fundamentals. So if you want to look at how tall a building is going to be, the number one thing you should look at besides the architectural plans, is how deeply they're digging the foundation. So a little shack doesn't need anything at all. You know, a single story house needs a shallow foundation. You want to build a skyscraper, you dig really deeply. So foundation foundations are insanely important. And I call those the fundamentals. And it's the basic, basic stuff. So it's eating, it's moving, it's sleeping, it's breathing, it's focusing. Our attention are the five principal fundamentals that I talk a lot about. And it's kind of like John Wooden, the greatest coach in sports history, according to espn, the first thing that he taught his basketball players, the best of his generation, he wouldn't let him touch a basketball until he taught them how to put on their socks. So for me, everyone wants to do the sexy thing. They don't want to do the mundane things, but. But you gotta get really, really good at the simple stuff. So if you're overconsuming sugar, if you're overconsuming refined foods, good luck. Your insulin's dysregulated. Your energy isn't going to be there. Your mitochondrial function isn't healthy. You won't show up well in your work or your love. But there are easy changes there are fundamental things you can do to fundamentally change your life. Moving. We know that if you don't exercise, you might as well take a depressant. There's an over under on number of steps a day. Sleeping is my number one thing, so that's my kryptonite. If I don't get a good night of sleep, I am a different human being. Simply adding an hour of sleep to most people's lives is life changing. Will we talk about sleep? Obvious things, but integrate them. And then breathing is a surprisingly powerful practice. Of all the things I've done, regulating my breath and training it every single day in a very precise way has fundamentally changed my life. I mean, I used to be super anxious and afraid of everything as a little boy and young man, et cetera. And then focusing. Scientists say if you want to flourish, you have to shine what they call the spotlight of your attention on what you want, when you want, for how long you want. If you can't do that, you're going to suffer. So if you're constantly, you know, splitting your attention via all the different stimuli, you're going to have a tough time showing up powerfully. So that's a fundamental practice that we get into as well.

Got it? Huh? All right.

We are six objectives down.

All of that leads us to our final objective. I'm gonna let you say what it is and explain it.

Yeah. So this one is again, what's the name of the book? It's to activate your heroic potential. So one of the things I like to talk about is if you look at the heroes that I have on my wall behind me now, and you look at them, and I got some on the top. I've got. I was raised Catholic, right? So I've got Jesus on the top left. You can't see it. Then I got Gandhi, then I got Winston Churchill. I got Mr. Rogers as one of my heroes. And I've got Eleanor Roosevelt, now Winston Churchill, who's right above me, and Gandhi didn't even like each other. Lived in the same era. They literally didn't like each other. Winston is, you know, big man. He talks all the time. Gandhi's a skinny little dude that will go days without talking. They didn't even like each other, yet they're both heroic, and they both have the exact same quality, as I see it. And Gandhi named it. He called it satyagraha, which we translated as nonviolent resistance. But it meant something much deeper. It meant satya and graha. It means truth force or love force or soul force. And the way that he changed the world was to create Soul Force among his community. Martin Luther King Jr. Talked about soul Force in his I have a dream speech. Confucius, who's on that side of my wall, talked about it. And it was. The whole point of ancient Chinese philosophy was to create wu wei, which is effortless right action. It's not no action. It's effortlessly doing the right thing moment to moment to moment. In order to create that, you had to cultivate something called da in ancient Chinese, which we translate as moral charisma or soul force. And they were so committed to cultivating it because someone who's living in integrity with their highest self and with their ideals and doing the things we just discussed in the first six objectives have a moral charisma, a soul force, and they've activated what I consider to be our superpowers. And that's the seventh objective. We've got a lot of stuff we talk about in there in terms of how to activate it, how to measure it, and how to engage it, moment to moment to moment.

So we're talking activate your superpower.

Yep. Which I call Soul Force.

And they go, I'm just a normal, ordinary, average person. I don't have a superpower. What would you say to that person?

I'd say you're kidding yourself. When you watch a movie, whether it's your think of. Everyone here can think of their favorite hero's story. Everyone's got a favorite one. You know, I'm a fan of Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Gladiator, Harry Potter series. You know, a good heroic quest has a hero on a quest. They get a guide, they get bodies, and they find that they have more power than they thought. Right. And the reason we are so drawn to them and why all cultures across all time. Joseph Campbell says, the hero with a thousand faces. Every culture has talked about this for one simple reason. That potential exists within every single one of us. So what I say is, you know, you want to know who my favorite hero is? Go look in the mirror. It's you. Like you, the individual who is listening to this or connecting to this, you are the hero we've been waiting for. Everyone's looking outside of themselves, waiting for someone to save them. That's the victim. We got enough victims in our world. We need to move from the victim to the creator to the hero. And it's hard work. But when we embrace, I believe when we know the ultimate game, which is to activate our ultimate potential in service to something bigger than ourselves, when we know rule number one of that game, that it's supposed to be hard. And we forge anti fragile confidence and then we simplify it all. Big three. Who am I at my best? Energy working them off. When am I going to be that today? How am I going to do it? I'm going to master myself. Systematically, structurally, reactively, expansive disciplines. Then I'm going to go deep in my fundamentals. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing. And then boom. And then I like to talk about it as a formula. So Eckhart Tolle has his power of now, right? Which I love conceptually. But I'm like, what does that mean? I get it and I've learned a lot. But I mean, okay, the power of now, what does that mean? We have a formula that I unpack in the seventh objective, where soul force equals energy focused on what's important now within a parenthesis to the power of consistency. So let's say that you work your miracle morning. You get yourself more energized than you've ever been. And then you're able to focus that energy on what's truly important right now. If you can do that, you feel really, really alive. And then if you can do that consistently, you're a completely different person. Who's showing up in my mind heroically? And we do math on it really briefly. Let's say your energy is 100, which is versus 1. Let's say your focus is 100 instead of 1. And let's say you're really doing what's important now. Now, that might be me and you talking right now. It might be, you know, me hanging out with my daughter, pushing her in the hammock. That's important. I'm not looking at my phone. I'm with her. So it isn't work, it's what's important right now. But if you can get your energy to 100 and you can get your focus to 100 and you can get it focused on what's truly important now at 100. 100 times 100 times 100 is a million. Now if you do that, parentheses up to the power, the exponentializer is consistency. You can't do it once in a while. You can't go to a weekend event and walk on fire and think your life changed. It didn't. You have to come back the next day. And if you don't come back the next day and do it again, you will feel worse than you felt before the weekend. Because now you tasted it. Now you feel dude. And then. And I felt it certainly. And I Think we all have. And then we feel ashamed, we feel guilty. What's wrong with me, you know, and what's wrong with you isn't you. It's that we weren't taught properly, that it's hard. And you're going to have to show up every single day and moment to moment to moment, or if there's a gap, you're going to feel it anyway. A million to the power of zero. Let's say you have no consistency. You only do it when you feel like it. If you're inspired, you do it, but if you're not, you don't. That million becomes a one when you raise it to the power of zero. But then you felt the million, and now you're at a one. You're like, oh, my God. But if you can take the million and you can raise it to the power of 100, you're incredibly consistent, which is the thing we all have the most power over. We all can choose to show up today and moment to moment, a million to the power of a hundred. I remember when I first did this in my mind. I'm like, what is that? You know? Then I went to Google and I did the little calculator thing. I'm like, tried to figure out where the exponential thing was, right? I'm like, oh, there it is. A million to the power of a hundred. The answer is infinity. Your power is infinite. All of a sudden, boom and goosebumps. You've activated your superpower. To me, that's the heroic take on the power of now. And how you get to the power of now. You get your energy dialed in. You focus it on what's truly important now. And you don't do it once in a while when you feel like it. You do it to the best of your ability, all day, every day, especially when you don't feel like it. And then you're truly the hero of your story. You're a model of what's possible for your family and for your community. We may never hear about you. That doesn't matter. But you're showing up and you know, you are doing your best. You're closing the gap. Never perfectly, very importantly, but more and more consistently. And then what do you get? You're a good soul. You experience eudaimonia, and you're flourishing and you're serving the world and showing us what's possible. And that's the pathway through which I believe we can change the world again one person at a time. Starting with us Today, enroute to 51 2051, let's go. Hero is kind of my call sign there.

Dude. I am fired up right now. Genuinely, I'm so inspired by you, Brian. And that was just masterfully explained. I can tell you spent some time on this book. You didn't just. It wasn't one of those write a book in a weekend deals. This is who you've been for decades and all funneling it into this moment, this book, this interview. I am so excited to read this. I pre ordered the book the day it came up the other day. Where can people pre order? I got mine on Amazon. Is that the best spot or where should people pre order? Activate your heroic potential.

Yeah, Amazon's great. So we're in Barnes and we. We are at Barnes and Noble and we will be when we launch in all the other obvious places, but Amazon. Activate your heroic potential and you can also go to heroic us slash book. And then you can read the forward by Phil Stutz, who I mentioned, who wrote the Ford and the introduction to the book, and see some kind words from different people out there. But yeah, man, I appreciate you. Our chats are some of my favorites. I get. I get to a level with you that I don't get too often. So I really appreciate you and who you are and the space you hold for us together. So thank you and bless you and day one, let's go.

Amen, brother. Activate your heroic potential, everybody. I'm so excited for this book. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Go to Amazon and pre order it. Go to heroic us book. You can read the foreword, you can read the. The introduction and everything and really get your feet wet and. And then the book will arrive on your doorstep on November 7th. I can't wait. All right, brother. I appreciate you. Thank you for the work that you're doing, Brian. I love you, man, and I can't wait to talk to you.

All right, brother.