17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson breaks down ambivalence as ambi (both) plus valence (strength), then reframes mixed feelings as heroic valence: channeling two strong sides of yourself at once. Kathryn Collins showed him this is how founders and philosophers actually work.
You're listening to optimize with brian johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Continuing our time with my dear friend Kathryn Collins, let's talk about another micro moment of divine wisdom from our recent chat. Quick context. As you know, if you've been following along, I've spent half of the last 20 years in founder CEO mode and the other half in philosopher lover of wisdom mode. Now, although I'm not really into astrological signs, I happen to be a Gemini, and that myth happens to describe one of my primary challenges pretty well. I often feel a pull to be one or the other a CEO or a philosopher, which recently made me think of the word ambivalence, which led to a trip to my 2084 page American Heritage Dictionary. I flipped to page 56. Here's the definition of ambivalence, the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone. Alright, got it. Etymology of the word get this Ambi means on both sides of and valence comes from the same root as valor and valiant. It basically means strength. So I reflect on the idea that ambivalence basically means to be on both sides of strength, and that from my perspective at the time, the result of that is weakness. Now let's head back to my chat with Kathryn. I share that little distinction with her, to which she replies by saying something along the lines of, well, we could look at it that way. Or we could say that you have two simultaneously strong channels through which you can express your gifts, to which I say, God bless you, Catherine. Seriously. Which leads us to today's plus one. Do you feel any ambivalence in your life? What if we could reframe that ambivalence into heroic valence? I wonder how can we take you and your multifaceted awesome and channel all that awesome into heroic strength? Seriously, how can we go about doing that? Get on that. We need you and all your gifts one more time. Be not afraid. Give us all you've got. Pretty please. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.
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