#1: Optimizing Soul Force (via E x F x WIN + Emerson's virtue art + Top 3 coming soon + ...) (#56)

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Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry with a Tuesday morning edition. Yesterday I did a quick one before I transitioned from deep work to quick recovery meditation and reading some of the optimized coach pre order why they're excited about the book things. Today I'm going to do it between AM one deep work time block and my first deep love time block. I've actually already spent some time with the kids and wife, but I'm going to do this before I go. So I'm two and a half hours into the day and it is into my work day and it is 8:17 in the morning now. I really, really like getting up early. Got up this morning at 4:30am after nine hours of sleep. We went to bed at 7:30 yesterday. Sleep score was awesome. 90 readiness 82. I'm going to take that though because I'm pushing myself hard, training, etc. We'll talk more about the aura. I did an ice bath yesterday, dropped the resting heart rate down to 36. 37 was a solid. I could hold it at 37, which I think might be the lowest I've ever hit, which is kind of fun as always. Actually, we'll just go there real quick and then I got a ton of other creative stuff I want to share. So resting heart rate 43. Heart rate variability 57. Fine. Not outstanding, not bad. Fine. Perfect. Sleep's going on like a 90. But then here's the heart rate variability again. This is what happens when I do an ice bath and this was a cold one last night because the water, it's getting colder here in Austin, outside of Austin, so the water is actually cooler so I can throw three bags of ice in and it was cold five minutes. Boom. And it's only the first 30 seconds, by the way, that are hard. And I absolutely love that moment before you jump in. And I just. It's the William James do something every day you don't want to do and then you get to a point Seneca style where you actually really enjoy doing the things that are best for you, even if they're hard like that. So I actually love it. So my resting heart rate was lowest right when I hopped into bed. Like I said. You know, I use the oximeter before and after I go into the ice plunge and it's fascinating to me to see. And Emerson actually sketched it. He was so excited we do it together, right? So he kind of meditates by training his breath and using the oximeter so he's able to reduce his resting heart rate. And he knows when he's going to have a good night. You know, we playfully say, and when I'm going to have a good night. He knows if I hit, you know, the 40s, and particularly the mid-40s, I'm going to. I'm doing great. I'm going to wake up with a really good aura. Score. So when he saw it come to 37, he's like, Dad, 37. That's amazing. Oh, my goodness. So he went and drew this for me, which is one of my new cherished possessions, his little rendition of our oximeter. Right? 100. Blood saturation, oxygen saturation, which is also amazing. When I do the ice bath, boom, just blows up to 100. It can be 95, 96, 97. It's 199 after I get out of the ice plunge. And then the resting heart rate again. 37. I love Dad. I love you too, buddy. We've got some suns. We've got the virtue compass. Let me get that guy stepping on Zeus. Sorry, buddy. What's up, dude? Hi, Zeus. This is Zeus. When we rescued Zeus. Oh, you sweet boy. You sweet boy. When we rescued Zeus, he had white lightning bolts for hair. He kind of had. He was at the shelter, you know, and he had horrible haircut and these long, white. Oh, buddy. These long, white, like, lightning bolts coming off of his head. So we knew. We're gonna name him Zeus. So we get to hang out with God every day. Ancient Greek God. So anyway, virtue compass is set to self mastery and zest. We'll talk to you about how I'm focusing on my soul force, getting my energy dialed in now that I'm expanding myself into this 101% philosopher and CEO role. Got a lot more going on than I did when I was just reading and writing and teaching. So it demands even more self mastery from me to recover well and to push myself while I'm doing so appropriately. Anyway, Emerson drew the little compass there, and I said, oh, that's awesome, buddy. Then he cruised back into my office and drew this compass. I didn't know what he was doing. What are you doing? Buddy comes in, he's drew this little compass. Wisdom, love, self mastery, and courage. And we talk about virtue all day, every day here at the Johnson house, right? He knows. He asked me, what do you want to. What's it set to today? What virtue is it set to today now? So which virtue do you want to set it to? All right.

Let's do love.

Okay, cool. Yeah, let's do love and little gratitude so I can appreciate you in our time together. Anyway, this is, again, one of my cherished possessions. I just found this in the. That's my new profile picture. That's me, Gordon Emerson. I really love this one, too. How great is that? I love my kids. All right, so there's that. I showed you the fun little dip in both heart rate variability and resting heart rate. Always kind of fun to see. And then the sleep side of things again. We went to bed early. Nine hours in bed, eight hours of sleep. 91% efficiency. That's great. REM and DEEP, both pretty good. I'm happy with that. Very happy with that. Then you can see the activity level. You know, now I'm pegging the 20,000 steps a day, and I'm rowing 2K. We got it at a higher level at this stage, we've got the running total average of over 20,000 steps. I'm fired up about that. My body feels good. And it's interesting because the only thing that's a little bit sore is my wrist. And it's not too bad, but I have 20 screws in this wrist. I shattered my wrist, as you may know, a couple years ago, had a wonderful surgery and a wonderful surgeon and a wonderful physical therapist who is an optimized coach. My surgeon told me, you're not doing burpees, dude, for, like, 12 months. I told him, I'm not so sure about that. Then I fortuitously ran into one of our optimized coaches at the, you know, Erewhon, like, a Whole Foods, like, store. On the way home from the surgeon, I ran into a woman who came up to me and said, Are you Mr. Optimize or. Hi, Mr. Optimize. I'm in your coach program. And she's a physical therapist who's one of my favorite human beings on the planet now, Dr. Julie. And she said, no, no, no, no. 12 months. No way. We'll cut that back. She got me doing burpees. One burpee, but a real burpee. Jump back, et cetera, in three months. Three months and a couple of days. And then I did a Spartan world championship race. Just did it for fun in, like, I don't know, eight months after the surgery. So anyway, that's the only thing that's a little bit sore with the burpees, but it feels great. Thank you again, Dr. J. I appreciate you. Yeah. So then I left our chat yesterday. Looking at the notes from our coaches, we've had hundreds of our coaches already commit to buying thousands of books, which is unbelievably cool. And I just got to give Matt a shout out here. Matt says that my first book he loved and he ordered it for everyone. And when can you pre order it? I know what everyone is getting for their birthdays for an entire year. I could not be more excited for this book. Matt, bless you. Then he, then he we asked him, hey, is there anything you want to say to the agent and publisher? Listen to what Matt says. If you publish this book, you will be the next Mike McClintock greenlighting Dr. Seuss. Dude, I got misty reading a ton of these, but if you pass, you will be drafting Sam Bowie of Michael Jordan. You are funny, dude. Choose wisely. How funny is that? So many sweet notes that have just moved me so much.

One of our coaches says, I love Brian's work.

I will require that my coaching clients purchase and read it so we can go over the philosophy and how they can apply to their lives. And the world needs Brian's work on a large scale. Thank you so much, Alice. Geez. He's clear, relatable, and likeable. Please do the world this service and promote it like you've never promoted a book before. It will be a game changer. I feel so much love and so much encouragement from our coaches and communities. So thank you all so much. And that was my dessert this morning. So when we launch something big and when you do something big, creatively, the tendency is to go in and check on how it's doing. So of course I wanted to know, oh, how did we do over the night? You know, it's been less than 24 hours and I'm really excited to see the feedback we got from our coaches. And I discipline myself, cultivate my soul force so my energy is dialed in by training my recovery. So I'm feeling great. And then my focus is on what's truly most important right now. So I want to be deep. I want to go deep into what's most important right now. So this was my dessert. I got to see this after I put in about two hours of deep work. Then it's funny because I chatted with Cal Newport yesterday afternoon. He we're his one of his first advertisers on his new show podcast called Deep Questions with Cal Newport. Check that out. On Thursday, we should have our first ad read, which he and I talked about yesterday. And then we're gonna have fun with that. We've committed to sponsoring his show through the end of the year. So we're gonna see what we can do to have a fun series of, you know, optimized ads on the core wisdom on the coaching program. And he wants to start promoting our social platform already. And I actually told him, dude, we're not ready yet. But he wants to get people, you know, on a platform that is about helping their soul be optimized, not having your soul sucked out of you. Fascinatingly, I'm also midway through this book. I'm going to finish it today and start the note on it. Today. I introduced him to Larry King and James Pawelski's producer for their podcast, Donna Hemmert, who's another one of our coaches who's amazing. So he's going to be on their show, I think, in a week. And I'm going to send out a blast in our weekly note to our optimizers. He's going to be on the show. Cal is with Tristan Harris. So Donna went out and got. Oh, we got Cal. We got to get Tristan Harris now. Tristan Harris is the main guy in the book that Jaron is in called the Social Dilemma. I'm going to repeat myself. If you haven't watched that documentary yet, get on it and then watch the James and Larry James. Larry King, James Pawelski's positive voices. Watch their show. I think it's October 8th or something. I couldn't do that week. I'm doing a later week for the re catch up one, but check them out. They're going to be on together. Tristan Harris and Cal Newport. Tristan articulates the problem, Cal articulates the solution. Digital minimalism. Check out our philosopher's note on digital minimalism. Check out his class, Digital Newport's class at Digital Minimalism 101. Get all of that if you haven't already at Optimize Me, get the free trial. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this morning, what I worked on, I made some edits to our perennial exercises. So that's going to become V1 2. I've got a ton of little micro edits in here to make it a little bit better, which I'll put into the growing book stack. I'm really fired up about the journaling. This takes me about 11 minutes to do. So, you know, the moonshot goal that we now have is a million coaches and students in our optimized coach program. Again, half of them want to do it to become coaches. The other half want to do it just to become better human beings and also coaches, you know in the broadest sense of the world, whether it's a professional Coach or a CEO or a HR executive, etc. A million in 2030, in this decade. And it's funny because whenever I think of decade, I think of it in my voice, like John F. Kennedy says in his moonshot speech where he said we are going to land a man on the moon in this decade. However, he says it with his beautiful accent, which what's your moonshot goal? Our moonshot goal with Optymyze is a million Optymyze coaches in this decade going through our Master Series program. 100,000 in 2025, 10,000 next year. And then we've got our handbook, which is going to be a, I believe, a catalytic force multiplier in all of our efforts. But that's our unbelievably ambitious let's do this. We want to change the world. We truly want to become the best versions of ourselves and train and and lead heroes. Then boom, let's go unleashed. Let's go be who we need to be in order to feel that. Which leads me to, you know, back to my how I'm planning my day and what I'm doing. You know, I went to bed at 7:30 last night. I was in bed for nine hours, got up at 4:30am Which I absolutely love. All I care about is what's important right now. And there's only three things I care about. Energy, work and love. My entire life is based around that. And my journaling this morning, it was basically soul force. That's all I want to create is heroic soul force. My identity again is athlete, philosopher plus CEO, then soulmate. I'm disciplined. I've 2x my movement, philosopher and CEO. I'm focused on what's important now. I want to cultivate heroic soul force. I want zero leakage is kind of how I'm thinking about it. Zero distractions. If it's not the most important thing in my energy, my work and my love, boom. Done. Not interested. Now, of course I'm never going to do that perfectly, but that's the commitment, focusing on what's truly most important. Now, I also tweaked my virtue for the love Big three Soulmate is no longer present and connected. Of course I want to be those things, but it's encouraging, truly encourage. Obviously this is what I do and we've talked about it, but to make it explicit in the number one virtue and you, my family, etc. And then I'm also thinking about joy. This is one of Phil Stutts big things is just go with everything with just pure joy bordering on euphoria, he says. Grounded, of course, but bordering on euphoria as you give 101% to the world, meeting God more than halfway up so that power can come through. And then also dignity. Dignity is a big word for me. It literally means to be worthy. To be dignified is to be worthy. So my whole thing is I want to lead again that virtuous army of heroes. That's it. And I got to be worthy of that. And I got to show up and do the work day in and day out to make that happen. Finally. I didn't even talk about the actual deep work I did this morning. The top three series. We're launching that on October 1st. So this morning I drafted the welcome email introducing the series and then my all time top three favorite books. So again, we've got this coming up. I think it's going to be at Optimize Me top three. The number three. Right. You can follow along, but I've already filmed videos on my top three favorite books of all time. My top three favorite habits books, ancient wisdom books, positive psychology books, nutrition books, fitness books, sleeping, breathing, Focusing, celebrating prosperity and weight loss. So I've already done basically 12 of my top three series. I've got dozens of additional ones ready to go. And these emails will start going out on October 1st. Then October 2nd we're going to October 1st. We'll introduce it October 2nd we've got my top three favorite all time. And then every three days we're going to release a new one. So I'm really excited about that. That was my first couple of hours this morning. Final point, I'm reminding myself that my willpower is lower later in the day. It's harder to get myself to do my last X sets of burpees later in the day or that row or whatever. I still do them if it's late, but I want to space them out but front load them. So I've already done 100 burpees so far today, right? So I'm banging them out. This is my day. And so, you know, again, I'm winning every single time I make one of those hash marks. Boom. When I hammer 100 burpees by like 7:45am I feel pretty good about myself. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All day, every day. We want to collect wins. It's getting long. I'll leave it at that. What are your soul goals? We'll go back to the journaling, actually. What are your soul goals? What are your wildly important targets? What are your identities, virtues and behaviors across your big three? How are you going to give us all you got today? I'm focused on self mastery and zest, which I love the way that it points upward too. So I'm focused on self mastery and zest, but the up part of it is wisdom and gratitude. I love the complimentariness of that. Sending tons of love. Thank you to everyone who has supported the cause so far with the pre inputs and let's do this together today.

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

Hi, this is Brian.

Hope you enjoyed that number One quick note. If you want to go deeper into Optymyze, check us out at Optimize Me. The team has set up a free two week trial where you can get instant access to all 600 plus 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 plus optimize plus 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.

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