#1: How do you start your day? Here’s how I start mine. (Breakfast of Champions + Oura 1-2-3+!) (#5)
Brian Johnson walks through his morning routine and how he uses his Oura ring to track sleep and readiness. He covers his breakfast habits, personal goals, and the daily practices he uses to optimize his day.
Chapters
Hey guys, what's up? This is Brian. We've got another number one. What I'm thinking about today, and I had an idea that I think is kind of cool. So today what I want to do is I'm going to walk you through my aura score this morning and I'll talk to you about my morning routine and what I look for, what's working, what needs work, what's my plus one today? How am I going to get a little bit better, which is how I start every single day. Literally. I get up, you know, use the restroom, plug in my aura ring, boom, there it is. And get the data while I take some supplements, etc. Then I want to talk about my creative process a little more. But morning routine. So here's my aura score for this morning. Today happens to be pretty good. And I'm kind of on a streak of pretty good right now, but I'm sure I'll have some days that aren't so great, which will be great for us to review. So here we go. Aura score. 88. I'm happy about that. 80. I actually didn't sleep that much yesterday. Went to bed at 8. 54, got up at 5. 13. Usually I sleep a little bit more. Seven hours of sleep. But I had a low resting heart rate, therefore my readiness was high. So let's take a look at that. So my resting heart rate, lowest resting heart rate last night was 40. My heart rate variability was 79, both of which are very good for me. So I got an 88. Readiness. I'll take it. I feel like that. Max 120. I'm super relaxed. You can see my heart rate is low. If I eat earlier. I ate more than four hours before I went to sleep, which is why I'm able to get this thing down fast. If I don't, it will be up here, then come down very late and probably won't get to where I want it. And my heart rate variability will be affected as well. It's fascinating. I talk about that a lot in our eating session for the Mastery Series. So my average was 43. 40. Hard to beat that. I can. I can get to 39, but that's. That's as good as it gets. Heart rate variability, average. That's. Again, I'm super happy about that. And then you can kind of scroll back. Yesterday it was 41. 65. 87. Readiness. I'll take that day before that. 40. 68. Boom. 94. Readiness. I slept really well. 4169. Again, I'll take that. 92, how you doing? And I'm working hard right now, which is also exciting. 40, 75, 90. I'm trying to find a day where I didn't have the great numbers. 41, 75, 41, 63. There we go. Oh, 73. Readiness. How you doing? What'd you do that day? So on days like this, like let's say I get a 73, right? I look at that, I'm like 43. Resting heart rate, which is, you know, 43, 44 is high for me. 45, I'm like not feeling well. I'm fighting something. 52, heart rate variability, I mean that's, what is that? 27 points below 79, that's like 50% less. 79 is 50% higher than that. That's a huge drop. So I want to know what did I do on this day that was different than the day when I crushed it? So I want to know what needs work, but I also want to know what's working. Life is really simple. You got to figure out what works, do more of it, figure out what doesn't work, and do less of it. Seriously, End of discussion. That's the whole philosophy of optimization in a nutshell. So anyway, I had a 73. Now let's look at our my resting heart rate. So heart rate variability was low in the beginning of the night. Then it, it gained some momentum toward the end, but my Max was only 87 that night, whereas it was over 100. 100. And whatever it was last night, look at my resting heart rate. So I mentioned to you that, well, I'll just show you, see, I'll toggle. So that was also. There we go. That's a night when I ate well within a four hour window before I went to bed. More than four hours before I went to bed. Right? Boom. My heart rate's already done. I've done my hard work of digestion. Digestion is crazy intense, which is why not having a long enough fasting window and eating long enough before you go to bed is correlated with cancer and cancer recurrence, etc. So anyway. Oh wait, I look at that number and I don't like getting a 73. Not going to pretend I like that. But neutral thinking, targeted thinking. What do I want? I want 90s. Okay, cool. Well then what needs to change? What did I learn from this? Wow. Eating early really does matter. Okay, I'm going to recommit tomorrow. Guess what? Boom. I'm going to eat earlier. And that's how I get on a String like this where I'm just dialed in and experiencing some great numbers that I want to see. Anyway, that's the aura for today. I won't be this long. Every time I share, but I'll share, you know, what's working, what needs work, what am I going to do differently? So today my analysis would be, wow, that works. What I'm doing works. And then I journal in the morning. I'll show you my whole journal. This is kind of some personal goals for me. Then I journal my compass are optimized virtue compass. These are the virtues, the four cardinal virtues and then the other virtues that science says lead to happiness very quickly. We'll do this in depth another time. The ultimate virtuous wisdom. You need to know the game you're playing and how to play it well. We call that eudaimonology. And then you need to play it well. Self mastery. So wisdom, self mastery, courage and love. Those are the four cardinal virtues that all cultures across all time share. Science tells us those are important. Then add hope. Again, there's a science to that. We talk about different contexts. Add gratitude, add curiosity, which is what I just demonstrated, by the way. I'm curious what's working, what needs work. That's a really important virtue. And then zest. Zest is actually the number one. I was stuck on hopes. I accidentally wrote zest there this morning. Zest, your energy, your life force is actually the number one virtue most highly correlated with your eudaimonic flourishing with your well being. Which is why we obsess about it and spend months on it in our mastery series for our coaches. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing. These all cultivate our zest so we can show up with these virtues more consistently. Now I wrote down, Look, I had a 40. Resting heart rate 79. Boom. I'm reflecting on that and saying while I'm doing this PEMF machine. Welcome to my office. We haven't even moved in all the way yet. I haven't put up my books. They're still in the barn. That's a PEMF machine. I meditated on that this morning. I sat on it for an hour last night from five to six Friday at afternoon watching the first episode of Michael Jordan's Last dance. Very good. Thanks for the wreck, Michael. Highly recommend it. And then I'm also using this thing called a nanov. So I actually had this thing plugged in while I was working. So I did this and that. This does some fancy stuff, but it's, it's working. So guess what? I'M going to keep on doing it. 5 to 6pm Go deep. My deep sleep was an hour and 40 minutes, which is phenomenal. Last night my little buddy just walked by right there. We got our first egg yesterday from our chickens. I've never seen Emerson so happy. Literally, it was amazing. So then I take these basic virtues and I say, what are my identities? Energy, work and love. This is what we work with with our coaches. We help you get clear on your big three, the things that make your life awesome when you are on energy wise, work wise, love wise. I'm an athlete. The best version of me, my identity is I'm an athlete. I can compete in a Spartan race 365 days a year and I want to be able to do it for another 35, 50 years. I'm excited about that. At 75, at 101, boom. That's like me. The virtue I'm going to embody today is I'm disciplined. The things I'm going to do today, identity, virtues, behaviors. It's our big three times two. I'm going to do my 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 sequence. I'm going to be on the trail for 30 minutes. I'm going to train a little harder today. I've been training with the kids so I'll do at least a three mile run plus the row and all that stuff. An hour. I'm going to eat by four for sure. I'm going to do the nano then. This is my symbol, Phi for philosopher. I'm committed to being a world class philosopher that helps you optimize your life so we can master our lives, master ourselves, serve heroically, empower others to do the same, blah, blah, blah. My virtue is prolific. I pride myself on creating at a high volume. Going to work 1, 2, 3 hours today and I'm also going to spend a ton of time with the kids. But I'm going to prep for celebration. Celebrating, which is a core virtue, which is what I did today. I'm going to film that tomorrow and then I'm going to oscillate and I'm going to get ready to film tomorrow. That's what that means for me. And then my identity as a in love is soulmate. So yudaimon means good soul, which is the basis of our entire philosophy. So I want to be a soul mate. Good soul to my wife, to my kids, to you. I feel like you and I are hanging out right now. Soul to soul. This is my love, is my work. There's no differentiation between the Two, as a teacher, I want to be connected to my wife, to my kids, to you. That's my cardinal virtue there. And then I'm going to manifest that by being a great dad today and the husband, of course. But I spend time with our kids every morning. Today it's a weekend, so I'm going to go to the zoo with them. There's this awesome little local private zoo near us where you can pet the monkeys and feed them, and it's gonna be awesome. I heard all about it. I can't wait to go. Tomorrow we're gonna have an adventure at Whole Foods, which is kind of our fun trip. And I give mom time during this time. And then, of course, in the evenings, we spend time together. And then my goal is, I want to be so awesome they adore me, right? So Cal Newport wrote a great book called Be so Good they Can't Ignore youe, which is great for work. Be so Energized they can feel you is great for energy. And then Be so awesome they adore you is how I approach my soulmates. So this is what I do every single morning. But I actually do before I do this, I have what I call a breakfast of champions. I celebrate some of my successes in life. Five of them. But then I also have a stack. This is just a small collection that I keep on my desk, but I feast on this. Breakfast of champions. Right? One of the books I just read called It Takes what It Takes, the guy coached super bowl winner Russell Wilson, and literally before the super bowl, the guy had breakfast. While he ate breakfast, Russell Wilson, he watched a highlight reel that his mental coach, Trevor Moad, put together for him. I thought that was the coolest idea ever. Breakfast of Champions. And I did it occasionally, but I'm like, ah, I'm feasting on this every single day. You know, what do I want to. What do I want to think about today? Oh, okay. I'll go through this, I'll go through that. I'll read all these different things. This one's amazing. Pardon the. Well, this is just how I feast. So I'm biased because I'm an optimized coach. This is an Android review. You can check out our Android app and iOS app at. Optimize Me slash apps. He says I'm biased as an optimized coach, but as someone who had already achieved success before I discovered Optimize. Peak performance psychologist, plus nine figure business, which means over a hundred million dollars. Nice work, Yassin. Optimize has allowed me to reach new levels beyond Those I learned more from Brian and Optimize than from my PhD. Yeah, baby. I'm feasting on that breakfast of champions that's like me. It's the best $144 per year that you will ever spend. First of all, thank you, Yassin. And yeah, that hits on a lot of things for me. We want to make the best, their best, and we do that, and we can change the world together. So that's literally how I start my morning. Now. All of that takes me. This takes me a minute or two, you know, this journaling I've got down to an art where that literally takes me like three, four, five minutes. And then that's obviously a few seconds, but boom. Okay, I'm ready to go. Now what? Now? This morning, I showed you my messy process yesterday. This is where we left off in my preparation for our Mastery Series session on celebrating again. We've got eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing, then celebrating, then prospering are our core fundamentals. So I. I had a really bad version one done yesterday. Then I hit it again today, and I'll hit it again tomorrow. Then I'm ready to go to the studio. So usually I just. I put all this, this on the ground, right? And then I throw it away. Just big waste paper, brasket. And I throw away way more than I actually wind up keeping, right? So I started here, then I got to here, which is a much more coherent look at what I wanted to do, but it wasn't quite it. So then I got here, right? And now I teach everything in 10 big ideas. And I'm sharing this because people have told me me sharing my creative process is helpful. So that's the reason why I'm doing this. Now, each of these ideas has its own page, right? And I've got some quotes. I'm going to invite some friends to the party. John Wooden, tall Ben Shahar, what do they have to say about celebrating, etc. And I got more and more clarity that there are three components. Complete acceptance of yourself. You will not celebrate life unless you embrace yourself. Then you need to practice gratitude. Then you need to win all day, every day. So that's the gestalt of the class. But I start with this paradox of optimizing. And I'll actually save this overview for tomorrow. We've already gone long here, so I'll give you the overview of this tomorrow. Then I'll show you where I go from iteratively from that to this to this to something that's hopefully even more clear. Then I'm ready. Then I'm going to go hit the studio. That is more than enough from me. I hope you got something out of this. If you feel it, leave some comments. Tell me what you want to. You want me to cover? You know, how can I serve? How can I be so awesome? You adore me. That's my standard here. Helping you optimize your life, actualize your potential so we can all master ourselves, serve heroically, and empower others to do the same. So we can change the world one person at a time together. Starting with you and me today. Let's do this. Big love. Make today an awesome day. See you.
