In this Heroic Plus One podcast episode, Brian Johnson reflects on Dan Coyle’s book Flourish and its central premise that we must cultivate conditions for joy, meaning, and fulfillment rather than trying to force flourishing. He highlights the concept of “awakening cues”—practices that pull us out of routine problem‑solving and into a higher‑self perspective—using Julia Cameron’s “morning pages” as a flagship example. Johnson then connects this idea to his own daily “+1” habit, arguing that these short, wisdom‑focused reflections serve as personal awakening cues for listeners. He takes the argument a step further, declaring that the individual themselves is the ultimate awakening cue: by embodying joy and purpose, we can inspire others to do the same. The episode closes with a motivational call to action, urging listeners to subscribe, explore the Heroic platform, and commit to day‑one participation in a collective flourishing journey.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic Plus One. In our last Plus One, we talked about Eleanor Grace and her passionate pursuit of jumping sticks on our recent trail walk. We used the opportunity to remind ourselves of T.S. Eliot's wisdom that only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. Today, I want to chat about one of the big ideas from Dan Coyle's new book Flourish that literally changed my life and in fact confirmed my intuition That I needed to get back to creating these plus ones. So the main theme of Flourish is the fact that we need to create the conditions in our lives for joy and meaning and fulfillment to show up. Dan tells us you can't force flourishing, but you can and should cultivate the conditions that make it more likely. Now, one of the things that can help catalyze flourishing is something he calls awakening cues. These are things that, as you may have guessed, awaken you to the possibilities of life, helping you get out of the day-to-day linear problem-solving stuff and live from your higher self. He uses Julia Cameron's morning pages as an example. As you may know, Julia wrote The Artist's Way. 5 million people have read it. Check out the notes. Now, one of the core practices she teaches that countless people have engaged in is something called morning pages. The basic idea? At the beginning of your day, you write 3 pages of whatever comes to mind every single morning. Now, this has a strange capacity to help you flourish. Dan says it's an awakening cue. And Dan shares a number of other examples of practices and rituals we can engage in that help us step out of our day-to-day busyness and awaken ourselves to higher possibilities. Now, as I read this, I thought of a couple of things. First, I realized that these +1s serve for many people as an awakening cue, an opportunity to slow down, reflect on some wisdom, and bring that wisdom into our lives as we strive to show up as our best. Now, that clarity confirmed my intuition that I needed to get back to sharing these +1s every day, and it also led me to the second distinction. You know what the ultimate awakening cue is? You. There's nothing more powerful that we can do to help bring more joy, meaning, and fulfillment to the world than to awaken those qualities within ourselves and then be an awakening cue for others to do the same. It's time to flourish, to bring more joy, meaning, and purpose into our lives as we do our best to help others do the same. It, as always, is day one. We are all in. Let's go. Hey, this is Brian. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. If you enjoyed it, please hit subscribe so that the best of the show keeps landing in your feed. Then head over to heroic.us. That's heroic.us, where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last 20 years, as well as the app, advanced training programs, coaching, and everything else we've built to help you optimize your life, actualize your potential, and live heroically. It is day one. We are all in. Let's go.
