Brian Johnson walks through a thought experiment from Matt Higgins' Burn the Boats: if you removed all limits, what would you do next? The idea is to use each win as a platform for the next achievement, compounding your way forward.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last few plus ones, we've been having fun tossing plan B overboard and going all in on creating a life of our dreams. Today we're going to spend another moment with Matt Higgins and mine another wisdom gem from his great book, Burn the Boats. Let's get straight to work. Matt tells us, and I quote, every time I achieve something new, I immediately look for something to build on that success, often in ways that weren't necessarily obvious beforehand. Once I started investing in companies, suddenly I had the kind of experience that could land me on Shark Tank. Once I had the Shark Tank seal of approval, I could teach at hbs. Once I had taught at hbs, I could write a book. What can you do today that you couldn't do yesterday? That moves you closer to what you want to do tomorrow? If you've still got a pulse, then there's always something else you should want to do tomorrow. And every new thing you achieve in life puts you in a better position to secure whatever the next milestone is. He continues by saying, an exciting and freeing thought experiment. If you ignored the limits and assumed you could do anything, what is it you would do with your life now? That's from chapter number seven, consolidate your gains, which is the first chapter in part three of the book. Part one, get in the water. Part two, no turning back. Part three, build more boats. And as I read that, I thought of Arnold Schwarzenegger for a couple of reasons. First, Arnold wrote a blurb for this book and he has some very strong thoughts on Plan B. We'll talk about his thoughts on Plan B in our next plus one spoiler alert. Arnold hates Plan B. And in his great book, Be Useful, Arnold echoes this wisdom when he tells us there's a story about Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Mount Everest. When he came back down to Base Camp, he was met by reporters who asked him what the view was like at the top of the world. He said it was incredible because while he was up there, he saw another mountain in the Himalayan range that he hadn't climbed yet. And he was already thinking about the route he would take to summit that peak next. When you reach the mountaintop, it gives you a brand new perspective on the rest of the world. On the rest of your life, you see new challenges that were out of sight before, and you see old challenges in new ways. With this huge victory now under your belt, they all become conquerable. Imagine that for a moment you summit Everest, you look around and what you most enjoy about the view is the next peak you can joyfully summit. Now back to Matt for today's plus one reflection. It's time for an exciting and freeing thought experiment. If you ignored the limits and assumed you could do anything, what is it you would do with your life? Well, what will it be, hero? Seriously? Pause, flip the switch. Invite the best, most heroic version of yourself to join us for a little thought experiment. Take a deep breath. Chest up, chin down. Calm. Confident. Now, think about one thing you are most proud of in your life. Something that required you to dream big, push through some huge obstacles and challenge yourself to really show up. You got it. Feast on that hero bar. Now know that if you can do that, you can do even more incredible things. Now, let's go back to our thought exercise. I repeat. If you ignored the limits and assumed you could do anything, what is it you would do with your life? You got it? Now go get it. Here's to going all in. As we activate our heroic potential and give the world all we've got. More moving from theory to practice to mastery. Together today.
