#1: How to Celebrate your life more TODAY! (Hint: Acceptance + Gratitude + Winning for the WIN!) (#6)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hey there.

This is Brian. Wrapping up my AM1 deep work time block. Went a little long today. Hour and 54 minutes in preparing for our celebrate class. But I'm going to do the breakfast of champions things real quick. It starts with a 1, 2, 3 analysis. For me I use the oura ring. O U R A whatever. You use Fitbit Etc data or just check in with yourself, see what time you went to sleep, what time you got up, Rooster's ready to go. Hit the day and then see 1, 2, 3, what's working, what needs work, what can you do a little differently today to spiral up and get a little better. So for me, basically I'm very, very, very happy with that. Resting heart rate 40. Heart rate variability 71.

Awesome.

It's working. I'm gonna keep on doing what I'm doing. Not a lot to talk about there. I did experiment with an ice bath with the family. Three one minute sessions in the ice bath and walking around the property, which was pretty sweet. But then my, my hero bar for this morning was checking into the stack of notes over there. There's a top secret text mess.

Most.

Senior seals who runs training mentorship at the SEAL training facility. So I read that note, I did a presentation with them, connected with their mental performance working group and I ate that hero bar. It was an amazing note saying that the, the session was quote, pure liquid gold. I'll feast on that. And then it also got me up to turn on the computer and to savor the day. So we went and got a a special tour with these two guys who are just two of my favorite humans on the planet and heroes. That's Emerson. He built them little Legos. So I come over here and I not only ate the hero bar, but I savored him in his Lego shipyard building these guys at Navy SEAL little boat. Now that's important because it's actually exactly what I'm talking about today in the class that I'm going to film on celebrating life. One of the key ideas we're going to discuss. Rooster, you are hitting it. I'm going to shut the window there. One of the key ideas we're going to discuss today is practicing gratitude. We know it works. It boosts your happiness by 25% simply keeping track of five things for which you're grateful once a week for 10 weeks.

Boom.

25% happier grateful people we know scientifically sleep a half an hour more a day. They get 33% more exercise than people who aren't grateful. And it's impossible literally to be both grateful and depressed. Try it. I challenge you. Be super grateful about your life and be super depressed at the same time. Not possible. That's a really powerful idea. We're going to talk about poisons, what gets in the way of gratitude and then the antidotes. Short story there, entitlement. When you feel entitled to a life that's just perfect all the time, well, guess what? You're not going to be feeling too great. But if you have humility to take the blessings you have in your life as granted, not for granted, boom, your well being goes up, etc. So one of the practices is that we're going to discuss. Where did I put it? Wow, we've got a circus going on over here today. Savoring. So savoring life's special moments in remembering that the highlights of your life, like I just did with Emerson, I see that picture. That was one of the highlights of our lives and we come back to it often. That's savoring. That's a great way to have an antidote to entitlement. And there's another thing called fresh appreciation where you freshly appreciate things that you may take for granted. We're going to talk about that. Hedonic treadmills, where you get used to things, you adapt to them. But guess what? There's no such thing as eudaimonic treadmills. Growth. Trying to live with virtue never gets old. There's always an exciting opportunity to celebrate. So anyway, we jumped ahead, which worked out. This is going to be module six, virtue number six, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing, celebrating. Then we wrap it up with prospering. The focus is gonna be practicing complete acceptance and profound gratitude as we win or learn all day, every day and celebrate the process. So I think that the gratitude and really celebrating life, we need to start by addressing a paradox of optimizing. There's a paradox to the fact that when we're seeking the highest expression of ourselves, as John Wooden would say, perfection, we run up against obstacles, which is the simple fact that perfection is impossible. Yet seeking it is how you achieve arete. So we got to find a way to resolve that paradox. We're going to talk about that and the fact that our ideals are guiding stars, not distant shores. We're never going to get there. We need to enjoy this moment right now and use our big goals, our high standards with complete acceptance of where we are to achieve a life of deep meaning, et cetera. Now I think again, that requires deep acceptance to really be grateful and to really celebrate life. You need to start by accepting your life. So we have three different ideas on acceptance. We need to know that we are perfectly imperfect. There are no perfect human beings. Maslow says, and you and I won't be the first. I always say. Then we look at soul ulcers. Socrates said that envy is the ulcer of the soul is the soul's ulcer. Think about that. What's the antidote to that? Celebrating other people. A Pali idea called mudita. Right. When we compare ourselves to people, we are not going to be happy. We want to accept ourselves completely. We're going to talk about that. Then we move into accepting reality. If there's a gap between what you think should be happening and what is happening, ah, that's not going to work. You need to accept reality completely. Amor fatih Nietzsche said, the love of your fate. And then we're going to talk about a mantra. Perfect. Whatever happens, you say perfect. Jocko Willink says, good, which I like, but I like perfect even more. We'll talk about the interesting relationship between perfect and completely. Perfect etymologically, literally means complete. And to be complete means to fill up. So when you accept yourself completely, you fill up. You're full, you're good. You don't need to worry about deficiency needs. You can move on to beingness needs, as Maslow says. Then when something goes wrong in quotes, you don't argue with reality, you accept it. You say perfect. Thank you for the opportunity to practice my philosophy. What do I want now? It needs to get done. We call that targeted thinking. Then we move on to accepting part three, our failures. Right? So we got to look back in the past and accept our failures. We had fun with this. I had fun with this one. The Joy of cooking Salty Hero bars with Abraham Maslow. We recently talked about and actually read a passage from Abraham Maslow's unpublished letters. Whenever he would find himself at the edge creatively, he'd get nauseous, he couldn't sleep, and his wife would say, something good must be cooking, Abe. So I want us to embrace that idea and I also want us to embrace the fact that if you want to hit the game winning home run, you got to be willing to strike out in that same batter's box. So we're going to talk about Joseph Campbell following your bliss. There's always the risk of a fiasco. You got to be willing to embrace the blood, the sweat, the tears that are key ingredients to your heroic Quest and your hero bars, they're salty. We're gonna have fun with that. Then we're getting into the gratitude. I already talked about this. I've already done my 88 or something like that. 99 burpees, gratitude, the poisons and antidotes. We're going to practice gratitude with thank you prayers. Meister Eckhart said if the only prayer you ever said was thank you, that'd be enough. We're gonna have fun with that and also say thank you, stoic gods, or whatever you want to have fun with for giving me this challenge so I can practice my philosophy. We're also going to talk about the power of journaling, gratitude writing gratitude letters and grateful flow being, finding opportunities to be grateful right now. Remembering the fact that you can't be simultaneously grateful and depressed. I realize that's very small writing and I could be flipping you through here, but hopefully you're able to endure this. If you have a preference, let me know. I could flip through anyway. 8th idea we're going to cover is winning or learning all day, every day. We're going to go back to that Breakfast of Champions where we have a 1, 2, 3. What I. How do I feel this morning? Right? Did what I did? Did what I did last night or does what I did last night work for me? What's working? What was awesome? I want to do that again. What's not working? I need to change that. And what can I do differently today? I use the Oura ring to guide me. You use whatever you need to use, but I highly encourage you to engage in that simple practice takes a minute. Spiral up, get better today, and then feast on your hero bars. Think about your top three things in your life you're most proud of. So I do that. And then I also nibble on a little testimonial or something from one of our community members that helps me celebrate the work I do and make the connection, which we know by the way, that when you can put a face and a name and a story to the work that you do, you do better work. It's amazing. You're more purpose driven, more meaningful, et cetera. So that's a cool part of the Breakfast of Champions. Then we're going to talk about how to celebrate. This is some BJ Fogg ideas. We're also going to talk about identifying what's truly important in your life right now. Doing it, Celebrating immediately and intensely. There's a science to that. The BJ Fogg out of Stanford brilliantly talks about in tiny Habits. Then the ninth is what are your number ones? Right. So what are the things you're most excited about? We break it down between the big three times two. Energy wise, what can you celebrate in your life? Work wise, what can you celebrate? Love wise, what can you celebrate? You got to practice this. And we challenge our coaches and we're going to hold them accountable to practicing this every single day.

Day.

You want to be an optimized coach. Fantastic move from theory to practice to mastery and hold yourself accountable like you asked us to hold you accountable. So what are you celebrating? Can't be an occasional thing. You need to rewire your brain consistently practicing this energy wise. So I'm thrilled that I feel great. Resting heart rate, heart rate variability is where I want it. Work wise, I feel blessed that I get to do this. I get to connect with you in this context. It's amazing. And go film this in the studio. Love wise, my family's amazing. I feel blessed. And then I think of three people. Big three times two. Energy, work and love. And then who are the three people I want to celebrate today? I'll celebrate my life, but then I want to celebrate them. So Alexandra, Emerson, Eleanor. For me, who are they? For you, what three people in your life can you celebrate today? I celebrate Alexandra's all in this. I married a woman that's as into this as I am. That's amazing. Emerson. I'm really celebrating his wisdom. He's making connections in a lot of different ways. That inspires me. And in Eleanor, she's feisty, three and.

A half years old.

She's developing her own little voice. I can celebrate that. Then we want to tell these people we appreciate them. Then we say, what's your number one thing you got from this whole class? Write yourself a prescription of what you're going to do differently in your life starting today. And then finally we have our tenth idea, the optimizer. In the arena, we're going to talk about the ultimate target. That Teddy Roosevelt quote of daring greatly being in the arena. Yeah, you're going to get sweaty and bloody and knocked down. That's a heck of a lot better than being in the stands and never having the courage to go into that arena. Then we experience eudaimonic joy, which is the ultimate target. Life is good. Let's go. Fall in love with the process of becoming your best self so you can master yourself, serve heroically, empower others to do the same. That's today's number one. Hope you enjoyed. Hope you got something out of this. What's the number one thing you just got. Fingers crossed you got something that you can take into your life today. Get on that. I'll see you tomorrow. I'm fired up about continuing these and I'm also super open to feedback. If there's things you'd like to see or things you'd like me to optimize, just let me know. Let's go make today awesome. See you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

Hi, this is Brian. Hope you enjoyed that. Number one quick note. If you want to go deeper into Optimize, check us out at Optimize Me. The team has set up a free two week trial we where you can get instant access to all 600 + philosopher's notes, all the PDFs, the MP3s, get it on the app, et cetera and 50 optimal living 101 classes on a range of subjects and of course the thousand + optimize + ones. And then if you want to go all in, check out Optimize Coach Optimize Me for the free trial for the core wisdom Optimize Me Coach if you want to go all in and master yourself, serve heroically and empower others to do the same. Have a great day. See you tomorrow.