A short spoken piece by Brian Johnson that presents a reflective exercise inspired by positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar. Listeners imagine their 110-year-old self time-traveling back for 30 minutes, 5 minutes, or 60 seconds to offer the most important life advice; they are asked to write down and begin living that wisdom now rather than waiting for a crisis.
Hi, this is Brian with another mini chapter from A Philosopher's Notes. This one's called 110 year old you. Talban Shahar, one of the world's leading positive psychologists and teacher of one of the most popular classes in Harvard University's history, tells us that we already have all the wisdom we need. He points to individuals who have near death experiences or life threatening illnesses who suddenly and permanently change their lives, creating meaning and happiness that hadn't been there before that moment. Essentially, they always knew what to do, but they weren't actually doing it till life gave them a big kick in the butt. He has this brilliant exercise to help us tap into the wisdom that's already percolating in our consciousness. It goes something like, you're 110 years old. NASA or Richard Branson's virgin. Time travel just invented a time machine. It can take you back to this moment. So your 110 year old self has 30 minutes to chat with your current you. What do you tell yourself? What are the most important truths, lessons, big ideas you'd want to share in that 30 minutes? What if you only had five minutes? What would you share? What if you only had 60 seconds? What's the most important message you, you'd want to share? Let's write that down. If my 110 year old version of myself appeared in front of the current version of me right now, this is what I tell myself. I'm whispering now. Now's a really good time to start paying attention to that advice. Let's live it now. Let's not wait until we have a life threatening illness or a near death experience. Let's live the wisdom that's within us now. Hope you enjoyed that quick look at 110-year-old you. Here's to getting our wisdom on and here's to having an awesome day. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. See ya.
