Brian Johnson explores a thought experiment from positive psychology: imagining yourself at 110 years old and looking back on your life. The exercise helps clarify what actually matters and what you might regret not doing.
Questions this episode answers
August 8, 2015.
Brian Johnson.
Happier; The Pursuit of Perfect.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More Wisdom in Less Time. This is a mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon.
110-Year-Old you'd Talban Shahar, one of the world's leading positive psychologists and teacher of 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 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 and lessons and 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'd want to share? Let's write that down in the book. We've got a little section here. We can write some stuff 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. You may want to press pause and think about that for a moment. What would your 110 year old version of you if you appeared right in front of yourself right now, what would they say to you? I'm whispering now. Now's a really good time to start paying attention to that advice. Bottom line, we already know what we need to know. The question is, are we going to live it? Of course the answer to that is yes, let's do it. Footnote on this little chapter, I say check out Tal Ben Shahar's great books Happier, where he outlines some big ideas from the positive psych movement and his uber popular class he taught at Harvard and where I discovered this exercise. And also check out the Pursuit of Perfect where he gives sage advice to all of us perfectionists out there. We've got philosopher's notes on both.
We hope you enjoyed this mini chapter from Brian's book, A Philosopher's Notes. Want more Wisdom in Less Time delivered in your inbox. Sign up for Brian's free daily newsletter, the Optimizer, and get the full ebook and audiobook at brianjohnson Me APN.
