#1: The ABC’s of Intimacy (Alexandra’s cameo + Date night + Weekly planning +) (#34)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hey, guys, what's up? This is Bry, happiest of Sunday mornings to you. I had a date night last night. What's up, wifey? We got our first night out, other than the night I spent in the hospital when I broke my arm together. Eight years with our kids. We spent every night with them, which is actually very, very sweet. And it has been very nice to say thank you to Nama. Give us a night out. So we are sitting here in a hotel room in downtown Austin. And it's funny because I sit here and I'm like, you know what? Austin's amazing. And I think it's the next great American city. It's just blowing up. The number of cranes out here is crazy. It's. And we picked this hotel room for curious souls. Lots to discuss there in terms of why Austin is so amazing, why we came out here. You know, Ryan Holiday's out here, Tim Ferriss is out here. Joe Rogan's coming out here. You can kind of feel the energy for a range of reasons why Austin is so cool. Longer chat, separate time. But we chose this room because we're professional optimizers. And I should start today. I brought the diploma. I'm recommitting. Doesn't matter where I am. I'm recommitting. Today is the day, Day six of Optimize Coach class three. You can still join us for another, like, nine days. Day three. No, day one. What am I saying there? Class three, day one. Always day one. We're recommitting to being the best version of ourselves. But we chose this room because Alexandra, my beloved professional optimizer wife, is into these things. So anyway, pure room. Check it out. It's actually pretty cool. I don't. Not a big fan of hotel rooms, frankly, or traveling in general. I like my routines, etc. And I also like the purity of our house. But to be able to go on the road and find a hotel room, that's awesome. Check it out. Purroom.com thank you, people behind Pureroom, for making our room pure. The more of us to do this kind of thing, the more standardized it's going to become. Fun fact. Forgot my tape. I tape my mouth. I tape. Is that you laughing in the background? I got the peanut gallery back there laughing. I tape my mouth every single night. Literally. I have not missed a night in, like, years. So last night I go through my little toiletry thing, right? And I'm like, oh, My God, I forgot my tape and Alexander's like, no way. I thought you were gonna pack it. Like. No, I think we rated it the other day. Whatever. She had the brilliant idea of using band aids. Somebody called down. Originally, I tried gauze and masking tape and they gave me this huge, like, construction tape thing that didn't stick to my face. So that's like me. Went with the band aids, Criss cross, applesauce. Worked perfectly. You used one and it worked. That's like us for breathing. Yeah. Date night. Date night with band aids over our mouths. Yeah. Then we've got the stats. There's my password. If you ever get my ipod, it's Optimus. What is it? Optm. What is that? I don't even know what it is. Optimus one. Optimus one. Yeah. Optimus one. So readiness is solid. 89 today. Sleep was excellent. Last night. 89 now. I told you I'd run an experiment. Yesterday I ate late the last two days. So yesterday I said I would eat by 2pm, which I did. I. I actually ate at 1:30, my last meal. My resting heart rate went down from 45, which is quite high for me, to 43, which is not as low as it typically gets. But we're in a hotel. There's a lot of research, actually on how your sleep is affected negatively being in a hotel. Part of your brain remains a little bit awake in the new environment that's novel, et cetera. So I think that probably impacted it a little bit and we might have had a date night. So we had a good night. Very sweet, huh? Yeah. Yeah, it was. Heart rate variability. 78. We'll take it. What else is interesting here? Heart rate variability spiked at 153, which is awesome. Sleep was solid. That's like the most efficient sleep night I've had in a long time. And I laughed when I got up and talked to Alexandra about it. We sleep in a family bed, right? So it's Eleanor, Alexandra Emerson and me. And I absolutely love it. I wish I had done it all eight years. I've only been doing it for the last, like, I don't know, three months, four months, five months maybe now. But, you know, I get a lot of knees to the back from a little eight year old, which I love. So last night I'm like, what? Oh, I just am, like, asleep. There's nobody kicking me in the back. This is fantastic. Already done. 99. Where's my journaling for this morning? So I usually have my wall calendar when I don't have my wall calendar and I'm traveling. I write down one ten, one hundred, a thousand, ten thousand. I'm also playing a hundred thousand game which is getting over 14,000, about 500 steps a day which is 100,000 a week and then 30 trail etc so I like to keep track. I'm already 99 burpees in blah blah blah. I'll actually walk you through my planning for the week in a moment too, after we conclude our quick tour through Aura Sleep. Deep sleep is great. REM pretty good. 89 I'll take it. And having said that, yeah, I could probably get better sleep in some ways if I didn't sleep with the fam and have my beautiful little 8 year old give me some knee jabs in the middle of the night. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. Which is also a sweet Part of us being out here is realizing, you know what, our kids are amazing. We absolutely love them. Super sweet to get out and to spend a night away, but we feel super blessed to have the life that we have. So here's an interesting thing we're talking about. I'm reading this book Happy Together. Super good if you're in a relationship, want to be in a relationship. This is the book Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, Practical Tools on How to be Happy together and really, I playfully say in the note I'm creating, it should be flourished together. They redefine what it is I redefine in the note what it is to be a soulmate. You know, they challenge a lot of the pop culture ideas of hedonic happiness and go to the eudaimonic side. It's actually astonishing the parallels between their wisdom and what we talk about. And I haven't had a book that I could point to as a hey, read this book. This is it. So anyway, absolutely love that. So we've been thinking about how we increase our intimacy and there's a lot of different things we can do. We've been playing around with different things, but basically the ABCs and I'll be unpacking this and Alexandra will probably join us for some plus ones with me and she's also produced a couple dozen plus ones on her own already. We're probably going to launch those as Weekend Edition additions to the plus ones. Really excited about that, her sharing some of her wisdom and kind of her take on same ideas but but through her more feminine kind of goddess esque energy which is slightly different than mine, a little intense. Tend to run on the masculine side, wouldn't you say? Nice Balance. So anyway, we want to increase just our intimacy, but not just physical intimacy, but just the amount of time that we have with one another. And not in a, hey, once a month we're gonna go do whatever, which is also important, but daily. How do we create micro moments throughout the day, but then also like particular times when we are just together, etc. We home school before COVID and just we spend a lot of time, we work from home together, but we don't spend a lot of time together just the two of us. So anyway, the ABCs of behavior design according to BJ Fogg say anchor your new behavior and then celebrate it. So you anchor it to something you already do. So after my shutdown, complete ritual, which is about 6pm until the time changes, then it will shift to 5pm then, then Alexandra and I. Will go for a walk, simple little behavior. And we played around with a bunch of different things we could do. And we'll continue to experiment with it. But we'll do one loop around our property, right? The kids will be able to hang out with our favorite neighbor, Mr. Rogers. Boom. It's 10, 15 minute investment in one another that will allow us to have that deeper levels of intimacy. And again, simple stuff. And then once a week we'll find the opportunity to make sure we're able to be physically intimate with one another, have a babysitter come over and engage in a healthy kind of romance on that side of things. But how do we bake it in on a daily basis? Anchor after this, then I will do this. And then the other thing I came up with this morning, where did I put that? It was really good. Oh yeah, just I got tears in my eyes when I said this to Alexander of starting that part of our day by saying, you are the most important person in my life. I love you and I celebrate you, babe. You're the most important person in my life. I love you and I celebrate you. Oh yeah. So anyway, that's how we're planning to spend the time together. ABCs of intimacy. Think about your relationships. If you're like us and you've got two kids who are married for 13 years, it's challenging to continue and they talk about it in this book, to have harmonious passion. Not obsessive, crazy manic passion, but harmonious, grounded passion and positive emotions and savoring things in your life. And of course they ground their whole philosophy on virtue. Another chat we'll have another time. But anyway, that's some of the stuff that we're looking to do to apply the science of behavior design to our relationships. We're approaching the 10 minutes. This is my weekly planning. So I've got my high level stuff. Boom. Destiny's calling. Let's go meet God more than halfway. 100%, 101% hustle. I've got my thousand goals, thousand philosopher's note goal and the things that kind of downstream from that. Then I'm looking forward Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. What's most important for me this week? Now, of course, I draw the virtue compass. Wisdom, self mastery, courage, love, hope, gratitude, curiosity, zest. That's the ultimate game I'm playing. So I reminded myself of it daily. I'm going to play that well this week. And what's like the most important thing? I've got a lot of stuff going on, obviously business wise, you know, strategy wise, philosopher wise in terms of the plus ones, the philosopher's notes, etc. But I'm having fun kind of creating a constraint where James Pawelski, who's the founder of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania, he co founded with Martin Seligman. He is a interview series podcast kind of thing with Larry King. So Larry and James are interviewing me on Thursday evening. So I'm excited about that. It's gonna be fun. And I'm gonna have my philosopher's note done on this book and the PNTV done on this book and a philosopher's note on Larry King's book on connecting with people and the TV done by the end of day Tuesday so I can share it with him and say hey guys. Hey. Here you go, let's check it out. So that's a fun little goal for me that creates a constraint. So I'm going to focus Monday and Tuesday deep work style on that. Then I'm going to shift to plus ones and I'm going to do the interview. Then I'm going to go from there. But that's kind of the high level way. I'm looking at my week and what I do on a consistent basis. And then I just I soul force it. Energy. I'm going to get that dialed in times my focus. I'm going to have no distractions, superpower going deep on what's important now and I'm going to do that consistently. I'm going to maintain some flexibility, but that's the basic idea of what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it. Boom. Then we've got super quick. So I like to do one Page journaling. I'm going to squeeze in the compass. I'm going to squeeze in my big three times two. And then today I did some weekly planning, but here we go. Identity, energy wise. Athlete, identity, work wise, philosopher. Identity, love wise soulmate in the eudaimonic sense, not the hedonic, silly sense James and Susie talk about. You make me want to be a better man. Jack Nicholson said in as good as it gets. That's an idea of eudaimonic love versus Jerry Maguire, who said, you complete me. That would be an example of hedonic love. They go off on that in a really cool way. Anyway, athlete, identity, virtue, disciplined, philosopher, prolific soulmate, connected. And today, this is what I'm going to do. My normal movement, the nano. And then I'm gonna eat by four. Today, philosopher, we went into deep work mode. Alexandra reading, doing her thing, which is so fun to do together too. To meditate together in the morning, to read together and to do deep work together. Savoring it, you know, and then reading happy, right? But I'm only gonna do an hour today. Boom, done. We're gonna go spend some time together, hiking, recreating our first date. We didn't start our first date in the hotel room, but we did start our first date, what Was it, almost 14 years ago now? Thirteen and a half years ago. On a hike. On a hike. We went to a co op afterwards. We're going to do both of those things today. Then we're going to get home and have a great time with the family, reconnect with the kids. Nama's a gardener. She's helping us make an awesome labyrinth garden. We're going to make sure we plant some squash so we can have her ready for us in fall. And that, my friends, band aid and all. What I'm thinking about today, I'm thinking about you. And I hope you have an awesome day. Let's do this and flourish together. 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 where you can get instant access to all 600 plus philosopher's notes, all the PDFs, the MP3s, get it on the app, etc. And 50 optimal Living 101 classes on a range of subjects and of course the thousand plus optimized 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. See you tomorrow.