Brian Johnson walks through Stuart Wildhawk's perspective exercise: imagine yourself 250 feet tall and look down at your problems. They shrink. The idea is to tap into a bigger version of yourself whenever you get stuck in small annoyances, then come back and act from that calm.
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You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. A few plus ones ago we talked about Stuart Wild. He's an old school self help teacher who used to lecture with Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay and Deepak Chopra. He's really funny. He's also a fascinating blend of super esoteric spirituality and super intense discipline as per our dominate your life plus one. Today I want to chat about a practical little exercise I've been using from his great book, Infinite Self Short story the book is, as the title suggests, all about connecting to a power that's infinite, infinitely bigger than us. Call it whatever you want, God, the universe, the field, the force, doesn't matter. But I think we'd all agree that there's something bigger than us that's beating our hearts and growing our toenails while somehow finding the time to expand the universe at the mind boggling speed of around 68 km per second per megaparsec. So Stuart tells us that we'd be wise to figure out how to make that infinite power a more conscious, consistent part of our lives. He offers 33 steps in the book. Step one is to feel the force within you. Now it's not some abstract thing out there. It's within you right now. Check out the notes for more. For now, the exercise. The next time you feel annoyed by something or someone in your life, step back and imagine yourself as a 250 foot tall version of yourself. You're so tall that you can basically straddle your city and stand way above your little self, barely even seeing the tiny little problems you're dealing with at the moment. And if you want to go astronaut style all in on it, just imagine yourself as a 250,000 mile tall version of you. So big you can touch the moon with your finger. That should do the trick. Now from either of those vantage points, look down at your city or our planet and try to find your little self and your little problems that feel so big when you live from such a contracted place. How do things look from that perspective? Exactly like a non issue. And guess what? That's the accurate perspective. All of which leads us to today's plus one. Is anything or anyone annoying you? Say hello to the 250 foot or 250 mile tall version of you. Look at your problems from that vantage point. Smile, wave, then do what needs to get done. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to optimize me.
