A short podcast episode (Optimize with Brian Johnson) where Brian Johnson argues that demonstration matters more than instruction, using a personal parenting anecdote about accidentally cursing and his child's immediate mimicry to illustrate how children model observed behavior. The episode prompts listeners to reflect on what behaviors they are demonstrating and to 'clean up' habits they don't want replicated.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Wallace D. Wattles was an old school philosopher optimizer who wrote the Science of Getting Rich. He also wrote a little book called the Science of Being Great. Both of those titles are, of course, finalists for best titles ever in the Science of Being Great. He has a great line that has been tattooed on my brain since I read it. He said, the world needs demonstration more than it needs instruction. The world needs demonstration more than it needs instruction. Isn't that a powerful statement? Kind of makes you wonder what you're demonstrating, eh? Now, for example, we know that kids don't do what they're told or taught. They do what they see. So it's pretty obvious we better model the behaviors we want to see in our kids if we want them to grow up to be great humans. All of which leads us to a little personal story, one from a couple months ago that features me in a laughably low moment in my parenting career. So here's the short story. My dad cursed like a sailor. In fact, he literally was a sailor. He enlisted in the Navy when he turned 18, and his language was just astonishingly bad. So bad he'd literally make my devout Catholic mom cry at times, which I can laugh at now, but it wasn't funny then. So anyway, I rarely curse and I've been committed to never cursing in front of the kids. So I was particularly appalled at myself when one evening when I was particularly tired and Emerson was acting particularly like a tired 5 year old, I got so annoyed by the meditation cushion. Oh, the irony. He dropped on my face when I wasn't looking as I was laying on the ground playing with Eleanor that I got up, walked out of the room and mumbled in a voice considerably louder than I intended, you're such a little. Shh. We'll leave it at that. And what happened next? Well, he was at the door and immediately said, no, you're such a little shit. Again, I can laugh as I type that, as I say this now because A, it's been a while, and B, he had no idea what the word was and hasn't repeated it since. And C, I got some serious mileage on the needs work front. But it was a really powerful opportunity for me to remember that the world needs demonstration more than it needs instruction. All of which leads us to today's plus one. What are you demonstrating? Any behaviors that make you wince that you'd like to clean up and throw out. Awesome. Time to clean up the emoji. Poop. Couldn't resist with that one. Let's do this. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, Go go. To Optimize Me.
