Brian Johnson (Optimize) emphasizes that sleep and basic self-care are foundational to courage and optimism. In this short talk he links fatigue to reduced bravery (quoting Vince Lombardi), gives a simple PM routine—set a wake time, calculate needed bed time, set a one-hour shutdown alarm—and urges listeners to implement it to improve mood and heroic capacity.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another optimize +1. In conquering Fear 101, we talked about how important it is to honor our fundamentals if we want to conquer our fear. Although the quality of our nutrition, exercise and sleep may not seem to be intimately related to the quality of our courage, it is. And as committed optimizers, we'd be wise to make the connection. Now. In that class, I encouraged us to figure out our number one. I need to do this fill in the blank thing to feel great Fundamental habit. And I pointed out for the umpteenth time that my number one self care habit is getting a good night of sleep. Then I shared the fact that for the umpteenth time that I simply can't see the world the same way when I'm tired. It's like my optimism light flickers and the world goes from being shiny awesome to not so shiny not so awesome. Then I pointed out the fact that legendary tough guy Vince Lombardi said the same thing. He told us fatigue makes cowards of us all. Now why would he say that? Here's a hint. Because it's true. Which is why I think echo that the most important thing and the most underrated thing we can do to boost our courage and overall life force, enthusiasm for life, et cetera, is to get a good night of sleep. Fact is, when we don't get adequate rest, we just don't see the world. Accurately read with joy and hope and radiant enthusiasm. Tomorrow we're going to connect that to my heart rate monitor Going wacky. Today we're going to plus one our PM bookends to get a better night of sleep. To give ourselves the best shot at being the most heroic versions of ourselves. Quick check in. What time do you want to get up tomorrow morning without an alarm clock for the bold. Now, how many hours of sleep would you like to get before then? And what time do you need to be in bed to make that happen? All right, you got that time. Now set an alarm for an hour before that time, then shut everything down. Give your brain and nervous system time to cool down. Then go through your nighttime routine. Lay out your hero cape all nice and neat for tomorrow morning and tuck yourself in at the prescribed time and voila. Of course, all of that is obviously super simple stuff, but as they say, it's simple but not easy to do. But let's do it tonight.
