A short spoken excerpt from Brian Johnson's YouTube video "Dare to be different." The speaker emphasizes maintaining individuality and resilience in a culture he calls 'profoundly sick,' encourages taming emotional reactivity ("taming the amygdala") to withstand criticism and ridicule, and advises sustaining consistent, appropriately paced intensity rather than burning out.
It's no measure of well being to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society. We got to remember that and then again find that beautiful power where we're respectful of other people's perspectives while standing within our own choices, et cetera. We've got to go through that process of having a different vision for our lives and for the world, taming the amygdala so we can stand in the face of criticism and people that want to make fun of us and others. If you're not being made fun of, you're not doing it right. Everyone has always made fun of the people that have aspired to be a little different than the normal culture. Peel the enthusiasm. Whether it's over over a day or a week or a month or two, it's an entirely different thing to sustain that and to build the scaffolding such that the partial truth in their criticism was that you started and stopped things and maybe you pushed yourself too hard. Maybe you were a bit of a perfectionist. This time around, we're going to alchemize that and see if we can sustain the appropriate level of intensity for the rest of our lives.
