#1: Ice baths, my Top 3 teachers ever, bullying, and TGIM! (#42)

Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry. Happiest of Mondays to you, tgim. Thank God it's Monday. I say that every day. But let's go. Lots to cover today we've got the Aura score. I ran a little test on an ice bath. I'm going to report in on drop the heart rate. Increase the heart rate variability. We'll talk some details on that. It's confounded because I also ate earlier, but I also want to talk about my top three, three favorite teachers of all time. I just recorded a separate video on that this morning as I was preparing for my top three books of all time. And we're going to do a series, we mentioned yesterday, 33 of the most important aspects we want to optimize of our lives from habits, ancient wisdom. Well, then some topic areas. Ancient wisdom, modern science, nutrition, fitness, sleeping, breathing, focusing, celebrating. I started preparing those videos today and I'm going to film those or at least some of them today. I also want to talk briefly about bullies. Emerson went to school yesterday, had a great time. The nature school. He didn't make a knife, by the way. He learned knife skills. He will make a bow and arrow next weekend though, I think, which is pretty awesome. And he had a little experience with a little bit of bowling. I'm going to talk about that. And it's funny because I get. People are just crazy on, on YouTube. So I get nice comments all the time, but I like to screen grab and print out other comments as well just to remind myself everything is empty of meaning, et cetera. But before we go any further, let's recommit Today's day one. I, Brian Johnson, hereby commit to being my optimist, best self in service to you and my family and the world today. Declaration. Got to make it every day. All right, where'd he go? We'll go to Aura 1, 2, 3. Yesterday, my number one goal is to increase my heart rate variability. As you may recall, if you were following along because it's been a little, little lower than I like 57. My resting heart rate was 45, which is high for me. Day before that, heart rate variability was 58, which is low for me. It was 48. The day before that intense week. 56, 42. Wow. It was really low. So I got some heart rate variability. Debt to pay back. There we go, 90. But I got to go all the way back a week to be at 90. So I got some debt to pay back. All good. Prioritize your recovery. Right? We talk about this all the time. So yesterday I did a number of things. I did everything I said I would do, which is eat early. My last meal was at one, which is always a driving factor. I almost fasted yesterday and I think I will do a fast test for us perhaps next weekend. We can see what happens if I take the day off of eating completely. Interesting, right? I'm interested to see what this will report. Alexandra's done it and her heart rate dropped and heart rate variability soared as a practice. Very interesting, right? Anyway, so I ate early, but I also did an ice bath experiment which was fun. Three minutes wasn't as cold as it could have been, but it was astonishing because afterwards I did my little oximeter thing, right? And it, my heart rate dropped to 38, which I often can get to, you know, 39, 40, 41 in the morning when I'm doing my meditation in the morning and I get my oxygen saturation on that little pulse oximeter thing to 100 in the morning. But usually at night it's more like 95, 96, 97. It was at 38, 100 after I did the ice bath, which again is like crazy. It was like almost funny. And again, it was confounded because it wasn't just the ice. I hadn't eaten in a number of hours, but that certainly my intuition has accelerated it. And while we're talking ice baths, William James once said, you got to practice exercising your will at least once a day. Do something you don't want to do simply so you have the ability to do what needs to get done when it needs to get done. Practice your will on a daily basis. Then before I forget, we'll do a quick little check in on my step count. So I'm playing the game of walking at least a hundred thousand steps a week. And as it turns out, that's almost exactly what it takes to get 100,000 steps a week. 14,585 steps running total average rather over the last week. It's lower than it actually is because I haven't walked anything yet today because it's still early. But anyway, I'm playing the 100,000 steps a day game. Join me if you feel so inspired. We encourage our coaches and actually require them to get certified to walk at least 10,000 steps a day and or move their bodies for 30 minutes, etc. So that's our aura. I also watched a movie, as promised. Rewatch the Matrix. Fascinating to watch it with a little deeper philosophical lens and watch it through those eyes rather than just to Be entertained. Now my readiness is only 84 because I'm paying back the heart rate variability. Balance, balance, debt. That's fine. But I'm thrilled to see the heart rate resting heart rate come down to 41. The sleep score was pretty good. 86. Interrupted hour and 40 minutes of deep. Only an hour of REM. Whatever. Interrupted. Emerson may have gotten some poison oak or something. So mom and Emerson were having a conversation in the middle of the night. There we go. Moving on. So today I'm going to continue to focus on the heart rate variability. I'm going to experiment with the ice bath again tonight. We did it. All the kids did it. Alexander did it. It was awesome. And top three favorite teachers of all time. We're going to share this video separately, but as I was preparing for my top three book series through the different domains I just described, habits, ancient wisdom, etc. I'm working on the ancient wisdom top three books. It's tough to boil it down to the top three. Super tough. So I'm going to have the top three, and then I'm also going to have the top ten. Kind of cheat of. Hey, these ones were almost there. But Ancient Wisdom, it's the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, which defines eudaimonia via arete, which is, of course, basically our entire philosophy. Then it's Epictetus in his discourses, which is stoicism 101. It's influenced so many people across time. And Epictetus is my favorite teacher. Then it's the Bhagavad Gita. The third one was the hardest. I realized, you know what? I got to go with the Gita. This was Gandhi's Bible. It's set on a metaphorical battlefield. We got to win the war within ourselves, be the change we want to see. That's not an easy process, right? Anyway, those are the top three. And as I did that, I made an asterisk here for, well, Epictetus is my favorite teacher. Then I'm like, well, who are my other favorite teachers? And I realized, oh, I got to do a video on that Epictetus. Maslow Campbell. I talk about why in that video you can check out. Super excited to share the top three videos on those books soon. And then the final thought is on the bullies, right? So Emerson got made fun of by some kids who are a little older. He's a super social guy, loves to make new friends and play games and stuff. And these kids were just too cool for school. You know, he's gotten picked on a Little bit, maybe at the park. But this first time he's like, you know, kind of emotionally moved him. So we had a great chat today. I'm gonna get Jocko Willink's book on bullying that Cal Newport and I talked about recently. But I told him about, you know, I get nice comments. I've got my stack of nice comments, but I get at least as many people that are just as Brene Brown would say via her friend, just jackasses and just trolls. Like, who says this? Who comes to the site and says what this guy does. Thank you, David. He has his own name on this and he says this. Seriously, if you're not gonna do research and put a video forward to the public, you are actually trying to control them and not give them correct knowledge. And then the other half of your video is you selling your own product. Get expletive that starts with an F, get F'd and do your homework. Optimize with brain. Johnson can't even spell my name right when he's criticizing me. So I know I used to get triggered by this, you know, and I used to not want to put my work out because of people like this. And this happens every single day, right? But then it's then, you know, right underneath that I've got somebody. Thank you. Vagabonding expat who tells me my two favorite thought leaders, who I read every day, Brian and Ryan. And he spells my name right. Congratulations. Nice. Starting to believe that Austin, Texas is the new Athens. Reading this book now. Looking forward to the last 16 pages. These literally were like back to back comments in YouTube. And I like to save some of the mean posts or just ridiculous posts to remind myself that everything is empty of meaning, you know, and what someone says about us, this is what we shared with Emerson, says more about them than it does about us. And we need to create a separation and really have a deep sense of self and know that. You know what, David, God bless you. I'm sorry you're having a rough day. And that you think this public forum is the context in which you should express this. And there's a level of obviously annoyance and frustration, but there's also underneath it a level of compassion, of wow, really. And then also longer chat on controlling our digital inputs. You know, our world is unhealthy, that this is something that would be appropriate to put on a public forum. And again, this is a minor, modest take on what's going on all day, every day on YouTube and Twitter and Facebook. It's toxic. But anyway, we need to separate ourselves. And then from a bully perspective, it's really cool to be able to explore these ideas with Emerson and really develop his sense of self. He was wearing his optimized T shirt and they said it in a. Oh, optimize. Like, just making fun of it, you know. Matt, I got your comment. I promise I'd print that out. That was so good. He's like, I'm not going to wear my optimized T shirt again. And your mom's like, no, no, no, no, no. Fierce. You're wearing that thing next time. If you were wearing. I told him, if you're wearing a Patagonia. Oh, Patagonia. You're wearing your Spartan shirt that Joe Disena gave you. Oh, Spartan. Like, whatever. These kids are just going to do what they're going to do. We're not going to change who we are to make other people feel more comfortable. Blah, blah. And of course, longer chat, etc. Wanted to share that. Let's do this today. Journaling from this morning. That's what it looks like on a Monday morning here. Soul force. Let's go. Build it. Energy times. Focus on what's important right now. Consistently. I'll say one more thing. Jeffrey Schwartz, the guy who literally coined the phrase self directed neuroplasticity, he and I were on an interview together with James Pawelski, who runs the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at Penn. We were talking about a number of things and it was so fun to have that interaction. I got to put a link to it. But one of the things was consistency, that if you want to rewire your brain, do it consistently. And I went off on it. And then James said, what do you think about what Brian just said? And Jeffrey was awesome. He's like, yes, show up. Just do a little bit day in and day out, and you can change your brain radically. And of course, by extension, become the version of yourself that you want to become. So let's recommit to our virtues. Let's recommit to our big three identities. When, as always today, look forward to sharing more soon. See you.