+1: #665 Turning on the Light
17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
A short Optimize with Brian Johnson podcast episode (+1) where Brian contrasts theory and practice and shares parallel quotes from Ernest Holmes and Vernon Howard illustrating that it’s never too late to change—“flip on the light” now and each time it goes out. The episode encourages being teachable and moving from understanding to practice.
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Foreign. You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in Less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one we talked about the Optimize Master's program, AKA Optimize Coach, and had fun with some wisdom on moving from theory to to practice, reminding ourselves that the theory, although important, is just the rudimentary stuff. The advanced work is the actual practice. Now here's what was kind of weird. As I was drafting that plus one, I was doing some quick keyword searches on my Mac to find the quotes I wanted to pull. Now I grabbed one from Ernest Holmes, Creative Mind and Success and one from from Vernon Howard's the Power of youf Supermind. But before I found the right quote from Holmes, I opened up another one of our notes on another one of his great books called the Art of Life. Fun little note. I went through a phase where I was really into understanding what all the old school new thought guys thought and I read basically all of their stuff. So anyway, as I did that little searching and opened up a few PDFs, I noticed that the first big idea from both the Art of Life and from the power of your supermind books written by two different teachers 50 years apart, said almost exactly the same thing. Big Idea number one in our notes on the Art of Life by Ernest Holmes is using the law of Life. Every time you think, no matter how long you may have been using it wrongly in your ignorance, the very day, that hour, yes, the very moment you begin to use this power rightly, the effect of having used it wrongly will pass from your experience, does it make any difference how long a room has been dark when you introduce a light? How long the earth has been parched when refreshing rain comes to bring new life, a new seed, time and a new harvest to the fields? Thank you Ernest. And Big idea number one in our notes on the Power of your supermind by Vernon Howard goes like this. Again I quote. It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable, he says. That is the whole secret. So there you go. That's today's plus one. Flip on the light when today, then reflip it every time it goes off. Of course. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me. Sa.
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