Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential (Audiobook Sample)

Hey, this is Brian, and I am thrilled to welcome you to our audiobook sample for my upcoming book, Arete, activate your heroic potential. We're launching it on November 14th. I literally just finished recording the first 45 minutes or so of the book and I was so excited to share it with you that I couldn't wait and I wanted to share this sample. So what you'll get is the foreword from Phil Stotts, author of the Tools featured in the Netflix documentary appropriately called Stutz, and the first 10 chapters of the book. Now, again, this is about 45 minutes long. The audiobook is going to be around 25 hours when it's finally fully polished and recorded and all that good stuff. I've only recorded the first 10 chapters at this point, as I'm recording this for you now. But imagine 451 microchapters like these 10 chapters that we're going to share with you now in the audiobook, about 25 hours. And in the book itself, these 10 microchapters will be part of 451. That will be over 900 pages of wisdom that I hope delivers on Phil's brand promise that we have on the front cover of the book, that this book will change your life and if enough of us commit, it will change the world. So with that, I hope you enjoy the audiobook sample. Of course, you can get it at Amazon. Just search Arete A R E T E Brian Johnson. You can get it at Barnes and Noble, your local independent bookstore, etc. If you buy more than 25 copies, we've got a bunch of bonuses. If you buy over 50, we'll give you a great discount. So there you go. I really hope you enjoyed this. Sample it and I cannot wait to share the full thing with you and your families. Until then, it's day one. Let's go, hero. We'll start with the forward By Phil Stutts, MD, author of the Tools featured in the Netflix documentary appropriately called Stutz. Here's Phil Stutts from the forward. He tells us, I've been a psychiatrist for 45 years. That's a long time doing the same thing. Many of my colleagues have retired, worn down by the grind. What keeps me going is my patience. I've been fortunate enough to have a practice comprised of unusual people. They are not unusual because they've succeeded in conventional terms, even though most of them have. They're unusual because they refuse to be defined by any single accomplishment. Their identity is based on a process of endless possibility. They don't Stop creating. Working with these people can be profound, but it's also a lot of fun because I live in la. Many of them are in show business, which also means they're famous. Eventually, that rubbed off on me and I was designated as the shrink to the stars. I cringe when I hear that phrase. Yes, I have treated a lot of actors, but I've treated a lot of others in business, politics, the arts, medicine, etc. They all wanted the same thing. To unleash as much hidden potential as possible. Just the way a seed holds inside it the potential to become a tree. Every human being has a soul that holds inside it a vision of a future self. But that vision won't emerge by itself. Your soul has to be trained until it is strong enough to have an impact on the world. My job is to guide and encourage my patients as they move through this soul training. Rather than being the shrink to the stars, it would be more accurate to call me the shrink to the soul. You're about to read an extraordinary book written by an extraordinary person, Brian Johnson. I say that without hesitation because I have worked with Brian every week for years. At each meeting, I poured into him the totality of everything I had learned over 45 years on any topic. I had done this with many others, but no one even approached his ability to absorb information at dizzying speed and then make it his own. But that's only half the story. Training the soul is mostly a process focused on the individual. Brian is also a genius at connecting people and nurturing the a collective soul force. In short, I know greatness when I see it. And Brian's greatness just keeps on growing. Brian has a profound impact on everyone who crosses his path. In today's digital media world, he's considered an influencer. But when I hear that term, I think of someone with a lot of Twitter followers or someone who is plugged into the design and fashion worlds. The driving force for that kind of person is the fear and of not being cool, which is ultimately the fear of being left out. Brian had no interest in working on this superficial level. It barely scratches the surface of what a human being is capable of. He would accept nothing less than the unlocking of the hidden potential in each human being. And just the way this potential goes unexpressed in each of us, the entire human race has its own hidden human, hidden potential. Brian's goal was to uncover this collective potential. Without it, our survival as a planet is severely compromised. But to guide our whole species to its highest potential is a daunting task. It requires no less than the ability to inspire every single human being. This may sound grandiose, even impossible when you read it in the pages of this book, but when you're in Brian's physical presence, you can feel a boundless, almost supernatural enthusiasm that makes anything seem possible. I just got a little misty reading that. It's slightly awkward to read the foreword. About Me Wow. Bless you, Phil. Phil continues by saying Brian is a dreamer and he dreams big. What sets him apart is that he is disciplined and practical in pursuit of those dreams. Most self help books are products waiting to be sold. They have little ambition beyond catching the attention of potential readers. We read them to give ourselves a non specific sense of hope. Brian doesn't criticize others, but he would never publish a book with such modest goals. Especially now. Because right now we face a challenge so all encompassing that it puts our very existence at risk. The challenge comes from an enemy that wants to destroy us. This enemy is invisible, but its effects stare us right in the face. Take a hard look at the institutions that form the foundation of modern society. Government, education, the church, science, finance, media, medicine, the judiciary, etc. In every area there is a lack of discipline, leadership and transparency. This is a picture of a world that is falling apart. A world of chaos, fear and darkness. And only if we put that world back together again will we be strong enough to defend ourselves. Sounds bleak and overwhelming. Enter Brian Johnson. He didn't know it. The world didn't know it. But he had been preparing for this moment all his life. The moment when the two sides of his soul, his two major talents which would work in harmony to defeat the enemy that had turned our world into a living hell. A force that could overcome evil. Here are the two sides of Brian Johnson. One, his drive to bring out the heroic potential of the individual. The state of functioning you'll need to reach if you want to do anything big and frightening. He presents this as a modern form of the hero. In a war, the hero runs toward the battle. The more conflict around him or her, the more inspired the hero becomes. Number two. His drive to unify the human race as a unified whole. The human race is capable of anything. The problem is that evil works to prevent unification. It focuses on the differences between us, not the common ground. Brian has proven to me and to his thousands of followers that you can stay focused on the unique path toward your personal potential and and at the same time live within a structure that applies to all human beings. He calls the values and habits that have this universal relevance virtues the cardinal virtues Brian leans on have been present throughout all cultures across all time, including love, courage, wisdom, and discipline. This is only the foreword, not the book. I couldn't begin to cover all that you'll find as you read further, but understand the opportunity that you and I have been given. We are present at the inception of a new way to work with human beings. That is exactly what is needed right now. Its timeliness comes from the extraordinary amount of conflict, confusion and fear spreading without resistance over our world. What Brian has developed is much more than a bunch of coping mechanisms for the overstressed modern person. Although that would be an improvement for most of us. He's developed a training program for the soul. Commit to this training and you will gain the ability to transmute your biggest problems, your darkest days, into unstoppable courage, endless enthusiasm, and an unshakable faith in the future. This book will change your life, and if enough of us commit, it will change the world. Phil Stutts, M.D. los Angeles, California thank you, Phil, back to me. Nice to meet you. It's day one. Let's get to work. Hi, this is Brian. I appreciate you taking the time to open this book. I wish we could spend some time together so I could get to know you more. What I do know is that we're both busy and I like to share more wisdom in less time. So let's get straight to work. I want to start by telling you a little story, but first let me briefly introduce myself and give you a little context. In addition to being the founder and CEO of a company called Heroic Public Benefit Corporation, which I'll tell you more about, I'm the proud dad of a couple of kids, Emerson and Eleanor, and married to my best friend Alexandra. We live on a little ranch in the country outside Austin, Texas with three dogs, Zeus, Zap and Wags, two of which adopted us. A cat, Heroic the Stoic, who also adopted us, and nine chickens including Happy the rooster and his hens. Now, my 10 year old son Emerson recently got into chess. And when I say got into chess, I mean really got into chess. Less than a year ago we were introduced to a great website called ChessKid.com that features one of my all time favorite teachers, Mike Klein, who goes by Fun Master Mike, who has figured out a way to teach chess while helping kids have fun and fall in love with the game. Now we homeschool Emerson so he has a lot of time to spend studying chess. And over the last 10 months he spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing and practicing and all that. To put it in perspective, he watches the chess world championships with the same enthusiasm I watched Major League Baseball's World Series when I was 10. In short, he absolutely loves everything about chess. He won the Texas Chess State Championship for his division and his current big dream is to become a chess Grandmaster. Now that's the context. I'm writing this on a Saturday afternoon. I'm putting the final touches on the book and thinking about how I want to introduce you to the concept of arete. I think this little sequence of events from this morning might just be the best possible way I can bring this wisdom to life. So without further ado, let's get to work. P.S. before I forget, and so you know, the word are a tay, we'll define it in a moment. Is pronounced as you've heard me say a number of times. R A T spelled A R E T. Say it with me now. Arete. Objective 1. Know the ultimate game. Arete. Explain it like I'm 10. I'm a pretty disciplined guy and have a pretty structured way. I approach every day of the year. This morning, I cut my normal morning work protocol short to focus on my love protocol. The special occasion. A chess tournament with Emerson at the Austin Grandmaster Chess Academy. So I leave my office early and step into the kitchen all fired up about the day ahead. And Emerson tells me he doesn't want to go. Me. Really? What's up buddy? Emerson's wilted flower posture response? I don't know. I just don't want to go. Me. Hmm. Interesting. How about we go on a quick walk and talk about it? Emerson. Okay. We head out to hit the trail in our property. Eleanor and Mommy follow before heading the opposite direction on our little trail. Mommy says. He says he doesn't want to go because he doesn't think he will win. You might want to talk to him about that. Me? To myself? Fascinating. We'll definitely want to talk about that. I reach out to hold Emerson's hand as we start our walk. I squeeze it tight and tell him I love you in our little made up language we call squeeze ease. He tells me he loves me back via little squeeze. Me. So Mommy says you don't want to go because you're not going to win the tournament. Emerson. Yeah, me. With a chuckle. Dude, of course you're not going to win the tournament. You're going to play against guys that are insanely good. Remember what Nick, his coach, said yesterday when he was invited to play at an elite tournament that he knew he wouldn't win? Emerson. Yeah. He said he was super excited because he knew he'd be playing really good players that would challenge him and help him get better. Me. Exactly. Win or learn. And learning is winning. So let's go. Right, Emerson? Yep. Now, that part of our chat was on the first half of our loop. Right after we established the opportunity to win or learn, we ran into Mommy and Eleanor, who were headed the other direction. We gave them a high five and then continued our chat. Me. Hey, buddy, you know that voice in your head that was telling you all the reasons you didn't want to go to the chess tournament? Emerson. Yes, me. Well, and I stopped walking and got down on a knee and I looked him straight in the eyes. I said, we all have that voice in our head. And I want you to listen really closely right now. If you run your life making decisions based on what that voice in your head tells you, then pause. You will not create the life you want, period. Your Grandpa Phil calls that part X. We all have that voice. It's never going to go away. And one of the most important things you will ever learn to do is learning how to deal with that voice. Emerson. Eyes big, focused, locked in, fully registered. I stand up. We continue our walk. I grab his hand again. Me via squeezies. I love you. Him via squeezies. I love you too. Me. Now, here's how you deal with that voice. First, you need to recognize that part X is talking to you. You'll usually know because you will be whining or complaining or making up stories about why you don't want to do something you kind of know you actually really do want to do. Just notice the voices there. Then practice targeted thinking by asking yourself, what do I want? We make eye contact. He's fully present in tracking. So what do you want in your life, Emerson? Well, I want to be happy. And me. Exactly. I pull up this sleeve on my sweatshirt and show him the 1 inch tall, 5 inch wide tattoo I have on my left forearm. You want to be heroic and show up as your best self and create a great joyful life in which you're giving your gifts to the world. He nods his head and says, yeah, me. And you know how you will do that? Him? By helping people. Me. Great answer. Yeah, exactly. And in this situation, you need to. Then I pull up the other sleeve on my sweatshirt to show him the 1 inch tall, 4 inch wide tattoo on my right forearm. You need to live with Arete. You remember what that means? Him. Sort of. Me. It's an ancient Greek word. We translate it into English as virtue or excellence. But it has a deeper meaning. Something closer to expressing the best version of yourself moment to moment to moment. Then I stopped again and held up my right hand about eye level so it was parallel to the ground. Me. You see that line? That's you being your absolute best self. Then I held up my left hand about a foot below that, also parallel to the ground. Me. You see this line? That's you not being your best self. Now you see that gap between this line and that line? Emerson nods his head. Well, you know how you feel when there's that big of a gap. EMERSON not very good. Me. Exactly. Now what if we closed the gap between who we are capable of being and who we are actually being as we show up as the best version of ourselves. How do you think that that feels? EMERSON it feels good. Me no, it feels great. And that is the ultimate game we're all playing all day, every day. When we close the gap and choose to do the things that help us show up as the best version of ourselves, we feel a deep sense of joy. The ancient Greek and Stoic philosophers had a word for that as well. They called it eudaimonia. Emerson nods his head, letting me know he gets it. We continue walking. Me and guess what? Remember that voice that was telling you all the reasons why you shouldn't go to the tournament today? EMERSON yeah. Me. He wasn't helping you make the best decision, was he? EMERSON no. Me. And that is why I have this heroic tattoo and. And this Arete tattoo. Me via squeezies I love you. Him via squeezies I love you too. And that, my fellow hero in training, is one way to teach a kid the power of Arete. Helping you operationalize that wisdom so you can activate your heroic potential is what this book is all about. How to close the gap. Introducing Targeted Thinking. Now that I've introduced you to my family and to the ultimate game of life, I want to introduce you to the most powerful practice we can engage in to close the gap and live with Arete as we activate our heroic potential. It's called targeted thinking. Let's go back to the trail and continue our chat with Emerson. Now that part of the conversation we just discussed took us about 10 minutes to complete 1/2 mile loop on our property. Here's how we started our second loop. Me alright. Living with Arte so we can be heroic is the ultimate game of life. Now it's time to talk about chess. I smiled and looked at him. He smiled back. Me Tell me, what do you want when it comes to chess? Emerson I want to be a grandmaster. Me. I know. I love it. And I think you can do it. Tears my eyes as I say that. I squeeze his hand yet again. He squeezes mine back. Me. So if you want to become a grandmaster in chess, what do you need to do? Emerson? Keep on practicing hard. Me. Definitely. And what else do you need to do? Emerson thinks for a minute, then says, as a light bulb goes on. Play in a lot of tournaments. Me. Exactly. Wink and a squeeze from me. Smile and a squeeze right back from E. Me. Now, when that voice in your head was telling you all the reasons why you shouldn't go to the tournament today, was he helping you do what you need to do to achieve what you want to achieve? Emerson? No. Me. Exactly. Wink and a squeeze from me. Smile and a squeeze right back from E. Me. That's what we call targeted thinking. You've got to know what you want and what you need to do to get it. And you need to pay attention to when part X takes over your brain and tries to take you in the wrong direction. I look at Emerson, right? He looks back and says, yes, Me. So, ready to dominate the tournament and win or learn today, Emerson? Yes. Me. Let's go, hero. Of course, none of this is about my son. It's about you. What do you want in your life? Remember the ultimate game hint. Arete equals heroic. And remember targeted thinking. Know what you want, know what you need to do to get it. Tell part X to settle down and go do what you're here to do. Close the gap. Give us all you've got today. Fear and laziness. Wisdom from Grandpa Phil. I'm kind of enjoying this time together on our trail, so let's walk another loop together. So far, we have used Emerson's resistance to going to a chess tournament as the context to chat about arete and closing gaps in targeted thinking and. And how to be heroic. I skipped an important early part of our chat before we got to the whole. Arete equals heroic. Close the gap. Goodness. We talked about the two things that Phil Stutts, my spiritual godfather and Emerson's God grandfather says gets in our way of experiencing all the joy we want to feel in this precious life of ours. Pop quiz. What do you think the two things are? Insert Jeopardy music here. Answer. Phil Stutz, citing his favorite teacher, Rudolf Steiner, says that fear and laziness are the two biggest obstacles to activating our heroic potential. I repeat, the two primary obstacles that are getting in the way of you activating your heroic potential are very, very, very simple. Fear and laziness. With that in mind, if you feel so inspired, pause for a moment. Think about all that you want to create in your life. Who are you at your best? See it, feel it. Now. What's getting in the way of you closing the gap and being that best version of yourself? If you're honest with yourself, you'll see that more often than not, it's not the stuff outside of yourself that's limiting you. It's your own fear and laziness. Can you see that? Know this. Heroes have strength for two. Our secret weapon is love. So for whom will you do the hard work to conquer your fear and laziness so you can give us all you've got? Seriously, for whom will you do the hard work to conquer your your fear and laziness so you can give us all you've got? I'm committed to working hard and conquering my fear and my laziness for my wife and my kids and my friends and my team and our community and you. Day one. All in. Let's go, hero. Character versus design flaws. How to play the game of life. Now that we've mined some wisdom gems out of my morning with Emerson, how about one more gem from the evening? Then we'll carry on for curious souls. Emerson wound up having a great day of chess. He won two and won two more via lessons he learned and a couple of losses to some superior players. We decided to stop at the laser tag place on the way home as a little celebration of the day and as a celebration of a milestone. He hit on Chess.com so we show up at Blazer Tag in Austin excited to have some fun. And apparently we just missed getting into the group that was about to start. Eek. The start time for the next group was so late that we wouldn't be able to make it. The guy running the show says he'll get us in, but we'll be missing part of the briefing in which everyone is told how to play the game. Emerson had played earlier that week, and he knew how to play. I hadn't played laser tag in roughly 40 years. I'm thinking it's laser tag. Can't be that hard. I say, perfect. Thank you. We head into the final part of the briefing. Then we put on the gear. Then we head into the laser tag arena. And I'm absolutely terrible, as in, I'm really, really, really bad. To put it in perspective, earlier that week, Alexandra played with Emerson, and she was so bad that she got a -99 score. The guy who runs it said he'd never seen anyone do that bad. We laughed about it as a family that night and 10 minutes into the 20 minute game I had a minus 100 score face palm. My mental toughness was eroding quickly. Self talk wow. I'm really bad at this. I think I should just quit playing and find the exit. This is embarrassing. Then I look a little closer at the little stats dashboard on the laser thing right above my hall of shame worthy. Minus 100 score. I see some data on my ammo. I have a thousand units of laser tag ammo. Now that's a little weird because I'm pretty sure I started with a thousand units of laser tag ammo. And trust me, I've been trying to use those laser tag ammo units. My trigger finger is sore from squeezing that thing so hard. Then somehow as I fiddled with everything, I stumbled upon a little button at the end of the laser. I press it while squeezing the trigger and a laser fired. I heard it. A sound has never been so beautiful. Long story is slightly shorter Now I get to work channeling my inner seal and start having a ton of fun. I end the game with 400 and something points right behind Emerson. And you know what I thought of? I thought of BJ Falk. As you may know, BJ runs the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University. He's done some of the research that inspired James Clear's Atomic Habits and Charles Duhigg's Power of Habits. And he wrote his own book called Tiny Habits. I'm going to walk you through some of the best, most life changing ideas from all those books as we turn you into a habit installing and deleting ninja. But for now, I want to emphasize the distinction from his book that I was thinking about as I took my laser tag gear off. In short, BJ tells us that if you've struggled with changing your behaviors in the past, you might want to consider the fact that it wasn't a character flaw, but a design flaw. In other words, nothing was wrong with you per se. You simply didn't know how to effectively change your behavior. Laser tag is a lot easier and a lot more fun when you know how to play the game. And so is life. It's time for the briefing we never got. P.S. alexander tells me that I need to tell you that she too missed that part of the briefing in which they told us how to use the laser because she was chasing Eleanor at the time and that she had the exact same experience not knowing how to shoot a laser. Soulmates Overload when in Doubt, do this Admiral William H. McRaven is one of my heroes as a four star admiral. His final assignment was as commander of all U.S. special Operations forces. You may have seen his TEDx talk called make your bed. He's written a number of great books, including one based on that talk, a memoir called Sea Stories, and another great book called the Hero Code. In his most recent book on leadership, the Wisdom from the bullfrog, Admiral McRaven shares 18 military aphorisms that have guided his life. One of them is called when in Doubt Overload. Let's set some context, then we'll connect the wisdom from that book to the structure of this book. As you may know, when aspiring US Navy SEALs want to see if they have what it takes to join one of the most elite military forces in history, they have to go through what's known as buds. B U D S BUDS is short for basic underwater demolition SEAL training. Of course, that training is an extraordinarily challenging mental and physical trial. Only 20% of those who start finish. Now a little more context. On June 6, 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower led the invasion of Normandy that turned the tide of World War II. According to the Eisenhower Library, the invasion force included 7,000 ships and landing craft manned by over 195,000 naval personnel from eight allied countries. Almost 133,000 troops from the United States, the British Commonwealth and their allies landed on D Day. Pause for a moment and imagine the extraordinary commitment of all of those troops and their families willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the freedoms that we enjoy today. And if you feel so inspired, pause for another moment and feel into the equally extraordinary commitment of military servicemen and women and their families who are currently protecting the freedoms that we enjoy today. Note it's easy to take the freedoms and the warriors who protect them for granted rather than as granted. As we'll discuss the wisest among us and each of us in our wisest moments appreciate the sacrifices these loving and and courageous men and women make for us as we strive to give back in equal measure. Now, before the troops could get their 3,000 landing craft on the five beaches of Normandy, you know who showed up in the darkness of the previous nights to clear the way? Some of the very first U.S. navy SEALs. They were underwater demolition experts who found and destroyed the underwater barriers that had been set up to to prevent that landing. All of which leads us to McRaven's 16th leadership principle. From his Great book. And one more question. You know what U.S. navy SEALs are taught as they calculate how much explosives they need to use to blow up the underwater obstacles they're tasked with destroying. As McRaven puts it, Whenever they were in doubt about the amount of explosives to use, they were told to quote, always overload. Always put more energy, more focus, more power into the situation than seemed necessary. It was the only way to guarantee success in the face of uncertainty and doubt. End quote. And that is what I had in mind as I decided how I would structure this book. I could have delivered a standard 200 to 300 page book with a few dozen or even 100 potentially life changing ideas. I decided to overload and give you a 900 plus page book with 451 potentially life changing ideas. I want you to feel the potential explosive power of the ideas in this book as we get to work blowing up everything that may be in the way of us actualizing our potential so we can win the ultimate war between vice and virtue with we are all waging all day, every day. Remember, when in doubt, we overload. It's time to activate our heroic potential. 451 degrees activation energy. Have you ever heard of activation energy? It's a chemistry thing. The dictionary tells us that it's the minimum quantity of energy that the reacting species multiple must possess in order to undergo a specified reaction. Water only boils once it reaches its activation energy point of 212 degrees. 100 degrees certainly won't do it. 200 degrees won't do it. Not even 210 degrees or 211 degrees will do it. Simmering but not boiling. You want to boil? Then you need to get the heat all the way up to 212 degrees. Then you'll undergo the specified reaction and boil. Same rules apply with fire. Carbon and hydrogen atoms are hanging out in wood all day every day. And of course oxygen is hanging out in the air all day every day. But they won't combine to form fire molecules until a certain threshold is reached. We need 451 degrees of heat to create enough energy to catalyze the magical dance that is fire. Rub two sticks together and get to 400 degrees. Nothing. 449 degrees. Nothing. 450 degrees. Nope. Nothing. 451 degrees. Bam. Let there be light. That's activation energy. And that's why this book has 451 ideas. Any one of which might help you go to the next level in aggregate. Well, if all goes as planned, will activate your heroic potential. Ready at hand, your philosophical armamentarium. Epictetus is my favorite teacher. He was a former slave who taught and practiced Stoic philosophy in ancient Rome. He trained the guys who trained the emperor philosopher Marcus Aurelius. He's also the primary influence for the guys who created the modern cognitive behavioral therapy movement. One of his students took really good lecture notes. Thanks, Aryan. And captured his wisdom in a manual called the Enchiridion. The Greek word enchiridion is translated as handbook. But it's important to note that the word literally means within hand. To put it in perspective, the word was used to describe a hand dagger. Epictetus wisdom and the wisdom of all great ancient philosophers was less like a guidebook you held in your hand and more like a sword or a tool or a Navy SEAL's explosive you held in your hand wisdom that that was ready at hand and could be used to meet life's inevitable challenges. As we'll discuss, the Stoic philosophers told us that we needed to be warriors of the mind, not mere librarians cataloging interesting ideas. They had an entire collection of weapons and tools in what was known as their armamentarium. And that's how I'd like us to think about this book. 451 ideas to help us move from theory to practice to mastery together closing the gap between who we're capable of being and who we're actually being as we activate our heroic potential and give the world all we've got. Not someday. Today. Learning 101 Interleaving and spaced repetition As a professional philosopher for the last 15 years, I've distilled over 500 of the absolute best books on ancient wisdom and modern science into what I call Philosopher's notes. I've also created over 50 hour long masterclasses in which I distill the best ideas from those great books to help you optimize every facet of your life. In the Heroic app, we have classes on everything from Purpose 101, Productivity 101 and Confidence 101 to Nutrition 101, Sleep 101 and Love 101. We also have a class on Learning 101 in which I share the best ideas from some of the best books on learning, including Make It Stick, A Mind for Numbers and How We Learn. In that class, we talk about a concept scientists call interleaving. The basic idea is simple. If you want to learn something, you're better off varying your practice rather than grooving one identical rep after another. For example, they've done research on baseball players. If you throw someone 15 curveballs in a row, then 15 fastballs, they'll feel like they're doing really well, but they won't actually be improving the skills they need for an actual game when they won't know what's coming. Scientists call that the fluency illusion, and it's actually one of the greatest threats to effective learning, the interleaving approach, a random assortment of fastballs and curveballs that keeps the batter constantly guessing and thereby developing the actual skills he or she will need come game time. Of course, that doesn't always feel as good as the easier, more common approach when you know what's coming, but alas, that's where the learning occurs. And that's one of the things I had in mind as I mapped out how to best deliver these 451 potentially life changing ideas. As you'll see, we're going to deliberately interleave different themes within our seven objective chapters. We're also going to focus on another key aspect of learning 101 called spaced repetition. The basic idea with that is exactly what it sounds like. We want to create a little space between our deliberate repetition of the stuff we really want to make stick. And speaking of repetition, here's how Dan Coyle puts it in the Little Book of Talent he tells us, and I quote, repetition has a bad reputation. We tend to think of it as dull and uninspiring. But this perception is titanically wrong. And repetition is the single most powerful lever we have to improve skills because it uses the built in mechanism for making the wires of our brains faster and more accurate. Interleaving and spaced repetition. They do a hero moving from theory to practice to mastery. Good. P.S. you know what else helps us master a concept? Explaining it to someone else. If you feel so inspired, share what you're learning as you go. P.P.S. i created this book with two other books in mind. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Pressfield is one of my all time favorite writers. His incredibly inspiring and equally practical prose is an inspiration. It's very much how I love to write. You can read one of the potentially life changing micro chapters in his nonfiction books in a minute or three. That's exactly what I had in mind as I created this book. Yet in addition to creating a super readable open the book up to any page and potentially change your life in a few minutes kind of book, I also wanted to make sure the book had a density and gravitas to it. And of course I'm committed to doing everything I can to deliver on Phil's promise from the foreword of the book, in which he boldly says this book will change your life. Plus we received thousands of notes from our heroic community about why they were excited about this book, which were remarkably humbling and inspiring. I wanted to do my best to create a book worthy of comments like like this I quote one of our members. Brian is one of the great philosophers of our time. If this book is the distillation of his life's work, then it will be worth its weight in gold. And this one Humanity's greatest wisdom for living a prosperous life condensed into one book. How could anyone not be excited to buy this? And someone graciously said this book will be a classic handbook such as 7 Habits and how to Win Friends and Influence People, Timeless Principles and finally, this will be the best book in modern history for personal development. Period. No pressure, no diamonds right now. As I stepped back and felt into what the book needed to be to have a shot at delivering on those expectations, I realized that I wanted to create a book that is basically the war of art plus war and peace, pithy microchapters plus the dense brick of a book. You can start from the first page and systematically work your way through the seven objectives with the interleaving and spaced repetition. Or you can open up to any page and hopefully get inspired by one of the 451 ideas in a minute or three. Choose your own adventure hero. Let's go. The seven objectives to activate your heroic potential all that's nice and warm and fuzzy, eh? And it begs the question, how are we going to activate your heroic potential? Before we get into the details, I'd like to step back for a moment and tell you a little bit more about me. As I briefly mentioned, I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Heroic Public Benefit Corporation. Our mission is to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051. I've spent half of the last 25 years as a founder CEO and the other half as a philosopher. As a founder CEO, I've raised over $25 million, made crowdfunding history, and built and sold two social platforms. As a philosopher and teacher, I've helped millions of people from around the world and created an app and a protocol that have been scientifically shown to change lives. You may be wondering, what is heroic? My friend and mentor, John Mackey, the co founder and former CEO of Whole Foods, put it succinctly when he graciously said, and I quote, that Heroic is the best self development platform in the world. We've been fortunate to serve some of the most elite performers in the world, including best selling authors, Fortune 100 executives, military officers, athletes and coaches. We've also trained over 10,000 people from 100 plus countries with our Heroic Coach certification program, with the basic training program in our Heroic app and the Mastery series that is the foundation of our 300 day heroic coach program. We integrate ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools into seven objectives. This book features 451 potentially life changing ideas that are loosely organized into the seven objectives that are the foundation of our protocols that have been scientifically shown to change lives. Let's take a quick look at how we frame the seven objectives when we're training our heroes in the app and training coaches going through our certification program. Objective 1 Know the ultimate Game the first thing we need to do is step back and make sure we're playing the right game. Fact is, in such a profoundly sick society, we almost certainly aren't. We'll invite the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and leading positive psychologist Martin Seligman to the party as proxies for ancient wisdom in modern science and ask them about the ultimate meaning of life. We'll save the details for our discussion in a moment, but know this. They'll give us the exact same single word answer. Can you guess what it is? By the end of our first objective, you'll know the ultimate game you want to be playing and how to play it well. If your experience is like the thousands of people I've personally trained, this may be life changing. Objective 2 forge antifragile confidence Once we've established the ultimate game we're playing, it's time to learn how to play it well. Which leads us to our second objective. We're going to forge antifragile confidence. By the time we're done working together, we'll move from being fragile to resilient to antifragile, such that the more life kicks us around, the stronger we get. Now that requires confidence. Which leads us to another etymological pop quiz. Do you happen to know what the word confidence literally means? It means intense trust. Not that everything will go perfectly in your life, but that it doesn't matter how things go because you have what it takes to deal with whatever arises. That's antifragile confidence. Cultivating even 10% of your capacity here will change your life. And how do we build intense trust in ourselves? The same way we build trust in any relationship we do what we say we will do more specifically for our purposes. With the Heroic app, we help you develop a protocol, a set of behaviors that you engage in on a day to day basis that keep you plugged in to that best version of yourself. But here's the the secret sauce. We're going to help you write a new algorithm for your life. It goes like this. The worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. What do most people do when they feel a little off or overwhelmed? They stop doing the very things that would have kept them plugged in and capable of showing up powerfully. Not us. The worse we feel, the more committed we are to our protocols. This is your ticket to invincibility. You'll still have ups and downs because you're human, but your highs will be higher and your lows will be higher. And that's heroically awesome. Objective 3. Optimize your big three. Once we've established the game we're playing and learn rule number one on how to play it well, it's time to simplify self development. That's what we'll do with our third objective as we optimize what we call your big three Energy, work and love. As you've almost certainly experienced, if you've spent any time in the self development world, it can very quickly get very overwhelming. There's so much we can work on. Where do we begin? Well, Freud tells us that a good life comes down to two things, work and love. This is one of the few things on which I agree with the dear doctor but if your energy is suboptimal because of poor lifestyle choices, you're going to have a really hard time showing up powerfully in either your work or your love. Enter the big three. Energy, work and love. We're going to systematically help you get more energized than you've ever been, such that you, you can be more productive than you've ever been and at the same time more loving and connected to yourself and to your loved ones than you've ever been in your life. That's how to simplify self development so you can more consistently show up as the best, most heroic version of yourself. Objective 4 Make today a masterpiece. From there, it's time to get the fact that today's the day to move from theory to practice to mastery. We're going to help you become a master at creating masterpiece days. We'll start with your a.m. and p.m. bookends and we'll teach you the fact that somewhat paradoxically, a great day Begins with the end of your prior day. We'll talk about the simple key behavioral changes that can literally change your life overnight. And then we'll systematically install the highest leverage Behavioral changes that will help you show up powerfully in your energy, your work, and your love all day, every day. That, my heroic friend, is how we're going to help you become more energized, productive and loving than you've ever been. Objective five. Master yourself. All of which leads us to our fifth objective, in which we'll master the three disciplines of self mastery, Structural discipline, reactive discipline, and expansive discipline Will also tap into the art and science of behavioral change so you can become a heroic ninja in installing and deleting the behaviors that will help you become who you aspire to be. The number one thing to know. It's all about using your willpower wisely to install habits that run on autopilot via algorithms. If you feel so inspired, now might be a good time to pause for a moment. Ask yourself, what's the one thing you know you could be doing that if you started doing it today, would most change your life? Seriously, what is it? What's the one thing you could be doing that if you started doing it consistently, would most positively change your life? Fantastic. Imagine your life with that habit installed. Then imagine your life with your number one bad habit deleted. Then imagine having so much self mastery that you can install and delete habits at will. That's what our fifth objective is all about. Objective six, Dominate the fundamentals. From there, it's time for our sixth objective. It's time to dominate our fundamentals. We have seven Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing, celebrating, and and prospering. Each fundamental has a core set of behaviors that will train together. Why does this matter? Well, do you want to see how tall a building is going to be? Just look at how deeply they're digging the foundation. We need to really get the fact that greatness and becoming the best, most heroic version of ourselves is all about consistency on the fundamentals. We'll have a ton of momentum when we get to this point. And again, if you're like the thousands of people I've trained, you'll find that you're suddenly able to easily change some key behaviors across each of our fundamentals. Stuff you may have been struggling with for years. This is exciting, life changing, and incredibly empowering. Objective 7. Activate your superpower. All of that leads us to our final objective. It's time to activate your superpower. I call it Soul Force. Gandhi named it. Martin Luther King Jr. Talked about it in his I have a Dream speech. It's the force that changes the world. It's also the one thing all of your heroes have in common. And it's the one thing we all have in common with our heroes as well. We just need to activate it. There's a formula for it. We'll dive into the details soon. For now, know this. When you can get your energy for focused on what's important now, consistently you will activate your heroic potential and tap into the infinite power of Soul Force as you win the ultimate game of life and fulfill your destiny. I can't begin to tell you how fiercely committed I am to helping you do exactly that. Why? Because that's precisely how we're going to help you activate your heroic potential. And that's precisely how we can change the world. One person at a time. Together. Starting with you and me today.