Brian Johnson presents 10 practical tools for building anti-fragile confidence and heroic courage, including warrior training, creating an armamentarium of resources, orienteering, suffering well, and crafting a five-year hope map. Each idea pairs philosophy with concrete practices you can start using now.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Mastery series. Today we've got module two, the Study of a Good Hero, part two. We're working on creating Anti Fragile Confidence, her heroic courage and responsibility. Last session we defined those terms. This session we're going to train like warriors and stock our armamentarium with a bunch of tools and weapons and provisions for our heroic quests. As always, we have 10 big ideas. Let's take a quick look and then we will jump in. The first big idea is training like Heroic Warrior four philosopher monks. Pick your favorite metaphor. But we've got to show up with the level of intensity, embracing the small things while stalking our armamentarium or arsenal. Or you can call it your optimized depot if that's your thing. You don't like the warrior metaphor? Fine. But we want to have a set of tools that are ready at hand that we can use when we need them, moment to moment to moment on our heroic quest when we face these inevitable obstacles. The second big idea. That's the first big idea. The second big idea. We're about ready to embark on our heroic quest. Imagine being in a base camp or basic training. We're getting some basic skills in place and some tools and those provisions. Our second big idea is basic orienteering. Two parts. The first is going to be how to get perspective in time and space. We've talked a lot about urgency, but we want to step way back and see that none of this is that big of a deal. That'll be fun. Our third big idea is how to make a compass. We're going to talk about the importance of navigating properly, knowing that our standards, our ideals are guiding stars, not distant shores. There is no there there. We're going to talk about being a perfectionist vis a vis an optimalist. And we're actually going to look at how to construct a compass, look at our direction points via our virtues, etc. The fourth big idea is we're going to learn how to suffer well. We're going to learn how to make a healing balm. The fact is, we're probably going to get injured as we face those dragons. We may have some injuries we need to heal up. We're going to talk about self compassion, the three aspects of self compassion, common humanity, kindness and mindfulness. Then the fifth idea is how to make a hero pill. This is part two of suffering. Well, if suffering equals pain times resistance, as Kristin Neff puts it, then we need to Realize that we can reduce our suffering by reducing our amount of resistance. What's that mean? It means we need to accept what is. We need to love it. We need to use it as fuel. We're going to talk about a new equation. E equals o eating p + 1 to the infinite power. We're going to quote Joseph Campbell. The demon you swallow gives you its power. That's the hero pill. The sixth big idea is how to make a secret weapon. Our secret weapon is going to be a magic wand. We're going to tap into some wisdom from Hermes. We're going to quote Epictetus again and Hermes. Magic wand that can transmute everything into good. Not gold, but good, moral good. We're going to talk about alchemizing versus catastrophizing. We're even going to bring Harry Potter into the party. He's got some wisdom to share with us as well. The seventh big idea is how to make a hero fire. We've got our healing balm, our pills, our secret weapon. Now we need to create some heat. We're out there in the forest of the unknown. How do you make a fire? Well, we want to use everything as fuel. We're going to Talk about a 1, 2, 3 process Adapted from a lot of mental toughness teachers that's going to help us win or learn. The eighth big idea is how to make pearls. I carry a pearl in my pocket. These pearls are going to be used to trade for supplies. We're going to talk about the multiple steps in creating a pearl. And remember, it all starts with an irritant. Then the oyster works its magic. We're going to do the same thing. The ninth big idea is how to make a hope map. This is going to be version one of our hope map. We're going to refine it next week in our third part to this hero ology. But today we're going to look at our five year best self vision. If you could wave that wand and create the best future, what would it look like? That's your goal. Then you're going to create some confidence and create a pathway to that and then again take action on what's important. Now then our 10th idea is how to make hero bars and quit eating idiot bars. And in fact, we're going to talk about alchemizing idiot bars into hero bars. Going to challenge you to look at all of your greatest successes and see that one of the primary ingredients to the things that you're most proud of are the challenges that you overcame. So we're going to have some hero bars ready to fuel us for the next step in our hero's journey. That's a quick look at our top 10. Let's jump in. Alright. Our first big idea is a simple one. We need to train like heroic warrior philosopher monks and stock up our arsenal with these tools and the weapons they will use and have ready at hand. So the metaphor of the warrior I personally love warriors versus librarians. We're not cataloging ideas. We're showing up and we're fighting the battle between the best version of us and the not so great version of us. If warrior metaphors don't work for you, that's fine, substitute it for what does. But know that we need to show up with a level of intensity. Pick your favorite monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, or an Eckhart Tolle or a Byron. Katie, Spiritual teachers. These individuals show up with intensity. They know that we need to practice our philosophy moment to moment to moment. And I like that idea of that warrior showing up. Soldier at attention. Going through basic training. They're checking the dust on the mattress bed frame, right? Why? Because little things matter. We need to train like our lives are at stake for the simple fact that they are. So let's pay attention to the small things, the microtransactions, as Phil Stutts would say, David Allen, whose offices, old offices I'm filming in right now, he says the sublime comes through the mundane. We want to focus on the smallest little things and do our best in those micro moments of interaction with the world. That, that's the first part of this. The second part is we need to stock up our armamentarium, our arsenal. You want to call it the optimized depot. You can walk in and they got aisle after aisle after aisle of different tools that you can use in your life. We want to have our tools ready at hand. Epictetus comes to mind again. His handbook in Greece was called, in Greek, was called the Enchiridion in Kyridian. Right. We translated that as handbook, but it literally means ready at hand. Imagine having the tool that you need for whatever obstacle you're facing ready at hand right now. That's how we want to approach our heroic quests. And we want to remember that we need to practice our philosophy. More specifically, you need to practice your philosophy with an emphasis on your what's your philosophy? We're all going to have an idiosyncratic take on these ideas. What we want to encourage you to do is to figure out what your ideals are, what your values are what your best practices are and encourage you to use them. Practice them right now. Hey, this is Brian Again. I hope you enjoyed that overview of a Mastery Series session and got some wisdom out of it. You can apply to your life today. What was it again? You can learn more about our Optimize Coach program at Optimize Me Coach. And here's a fun little video we put together featuring some of our Optimized Coach graduates describing what they got out of our program and why they loved it so much. You can also check out hundreds of other testimonials at Optimize Me Coach. Have an awesome day and let's do this.
