17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson explains Nathaniel Branden's sentence-completion exercise from The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. Write 6 to 10 quick completions to a sentence stem to uncover hidden self-knowledge. The example: bring 5% more awareness to my activities today.
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Hi, this is Brian.
Welcome back to another Optimize plus one.
Nathaniel Brandon was a fascinating guy. As a teenager, he wrote a fan.
Letter to Ayn Rand, which she ignored. Then he wrote another letter a little.
Later, which led to an intimate relationship and collaboration. We'll save the details of that relationship for another discussion. For now, let's look at some wisdom from the six Pillars of Self Esteem where Nathaniel tells us about a little self awareness exercise called Sentence Completion. Here's how he puts it. Sentence completion work is a deceptively simple yet uniquely powerful tool for raising self understanding, self esteem and personal effectiveness. It rests on the premise that all of us have more knowledge than we are normally aware of, more wisdom than we use, more potentials than typically show.
Up in our behavior.
Sentence completion, he says, is a tool for accessing and activating these hidden resources. So how's it work? Like this. Take a sentence stem like living consciously to me means and create six to ten completions of that sentence. Only rule is that each ending needs to create a grammatical sentence. Write quickly, don't stop to think. And as Nathaniel says, any ending is fine. Just keep going.
So let's try it out on this sentence stem.
If I bring 5% more awareness to my activities today, if I bring 5% more awareness to my activities today, complete that sentence stem six, ten times. That's today's plus one. Here's to tapping into the wisdom that's always right there waiting for us.
Hey, this is Brian with a quick question for you. Do you know what the word optimize literally means? It's from the Latin optimus, which means the best.
In our case, we're talking about helping.
You create the best version of you. So another quick question. What's the best version of you look like?
How does that version of you show.
Up in the world? Helping you be that version of yourself all day, every day is what our Optimize membership program is all about. Now we obviously give away a ton of content for free and we give our 10,000 plus premium members a ton more. Members get hundreds of Philosopher's Notes which are 20 minute book summaries that help you apply the best big ideas. From the best optimal living books to your life to today plus members get dozens of hour long optimal living 101 masterclasses. More wisdom in less time for your busy life on everything from the science of setting and achieving goals. How to optimize your energy via the fundamentals of nutrition, movement, sleep and meditation, and how to be super productive day in and day out. While, of course, enjoying the whole process. Every facet of your life optimized equals you at your absolute best.
