Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

+1 #908: Hedonic Eudaimonia

30 Sept 2019 · 2 min

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2:27

Brian Johnson on combining instant pleasure with long-term growth through flow states. He skipped eating until after physical therapy, then worked 4.75 hours straight. Steven Kotler's Rise of Superman inspired the idea: use deep focus to stretch yourself while staying engaged.

Questions this video answers

3:15pm

3:30pm

4.75 hours

Steven Kotler (Rise of Superman)

Chapters

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Yesterday afternoon I was having my last meal of the day at 3:15pm Go glimp. Check out that plus one. Before my 3:30 physical therapy appointment with the wonderful Dr. Julie Beck, I was looking at the mountain and reflecting on how good I felt after a day filled with 4.75 hours of deep work flow. Then I smiled as I thought about the fact that I'm definitely a flow junkie. Flow junkie. Yep, that's a Steven Kotler phrase. We talked about it a couple years ago in a plus one that we linked to in this one recap of the basic idea. Well, in the Rise of Superman, Steven teaches us how to activate our superpowers by sharing the stories of some elite extreme sports athletes. These guys absolutely love the feeling they get pushing themselves to their edge in their chosen sports. They're addicted to flow, which just so happens to be precisely the way they continue to get better and better at their chosen crafts, showing up fully while pushing just past their current comfort zones. Remember 4% day after day after day, such that the impossible eventually becomes what's for breakfast? Basically, these guys and gals have figured out how to get instant gratification while doing the very things that lead to their actualization. That typically requires delaying gratification. Now, all of that pondering led me to smash two words together. Hedonic plus eudaimonic. Hedonic. That's basically the instant gratification stuff. Eudaimonic. Well, that's basically in the typically delayed gratification, actualizing your potential stuff. But what if we can dissolve the apparent dichotomy and make the most enjoyable things we do the very things that lead to our actualization. Enter Hedonic Eudaimonia. And that's today's plus one. How can you put yourself into a nice little focused bubble of flow as you stretch yourself a little more today? Say goodbye to the distractions, hello to your optimist self, and go get your flow on high fives. And here's to Hedonic Eudaimonia.