Brian Johnson introduces 10 ideas for making 2018 your greatest year: Phoenix Rising, reviewing 2017, imagining your best self over 10 years, nailing the fundamentals of eating and sleeping, building daily habits, cutting addictions and distractions, and using science-backed goal setting. A companion workbook has exercises for each.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living 101 Masterclass Series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting about greatest year ever, 2018. How to make 2018 the greatest year of your life in an unending string of such awesome years. As always, we've got 10 big ideas. Let's take a quick look and then we'll jump in. All right. Our first big idea is Phoenix Rising. I'm recording this while the fires in Ojai, just outside of our town, the Thomas fire, continue to burn. So the metaphor of a fire is quite relevant for me these days. I like to have themes for these classes. Last year, our theme was heroes, the ancient Greek etymology, the idea that a hero has strength for two. A hero is a protector. This year, we're going to talk about Phoenix Rising, what needs to burn away in your life, and what will rise from the ashes. We're also going to connect it to some Harry Potter wisdom as well, to have fun with that. The second big idea is what's awesome and what needs work. Before we move forward into 2018, let's take a moment and celebrate what. What was awesome about 2017, what went well and what needs a little bit of work. We'll dive into that. The third big idea is best you. Ultimately, that's our number one goal always. And the new year is simply a good opportunity for us to remind ourselves of what's important. So our third big idea is best you. We're going to go backwards 10 years. We're going to go forwards 10 years. Then we're going to go forward all the way to the end of your life and talk about the eulogy version of you. And then we're going to bring that to you right now, which is our fourth big idea. The best you. Right this moment. Ultimately, that's what we want to do. Moment to moment to moment. Can we express the highest version of ourselves more and more consistently? That's our number one target for 2018. That's how we're going to make it the greatest year of our lives and how we're going to create an unending string. We will unpack that as well. The fifth big idea are fundamentals. Every single class I teach nearly talks about the fundamentals. This one, we're going to remind ourselves of just how fundamental the fundies are. We're going to talk about the fact that the number one researcher, the number one scholar in hope, killed himself. That had a profound impact on me in my life and my philosophical teachings and my own practices. And it Reminded me of the importance of the fundamentals. Eating, moving, sleeping, moving from theory to practice. Moving from being a librarian to a true warrior of the mind. And it all starts with getting our physiology right. It's easy to take this for granted, but we can't afford to do that if we're committed to living an extraordinary life. That's our fifth big idea. Our sixth big idea is the Big three. In my one on one coaching work, oftentimes there's a challenge of figuring out how to set goals right where to focus. I think the Big three is a great way to simplify the process to identify what's really important in our lives. The energy, family, and service components. We're going to talk about who you aspire to be, what you want to achieve in 2018, why that matters to you, and how you are going to achieve it. We'll break that down. The workbook will help you articulate that with even more clarity. Our seventh big idea is to take the stuff we learned from the big three exercises, specifically the number one thing you're committed to doing on a daily basis, to actualize that best version of you in those three domains. And you're going to create masterpiece days. You want to have a great year. You want to have a great life. It all starts with days. And then of course, it's boiled down into moments, but. But we want to create masterpiece days. You're going to take those number one habits from the prior idea, apply it into your masterpiece day map. You're going to look at your a.m. bookends, your p.m. bookends, what I call your super cycles. Being intensely on and then intensely off is how we're going to create masterpiece days. We're going to talk about having a scorecard, having a checklist. The science is unequivocal here. Those things matter. Our eighth big idea for pickles, gnats and kryptonite dust. The fact is, the fastest way for you to improve your life and to have the greatest year of your life is to quit doing the things that don't work for you. That's always the fastest way to optimize. Stop doing stupid stuff. To put it bluntly, we're going to talk about your addictions and the fact that you have been pickled in your brain and in your life in certain ways that we want to respect. Then we're going to look at gnats flying around distracting you. We're going to look at kryptonite dust, those little things you're doing that just don't work. Our ninth Big Idea is the science of making your dreams a reality. Whoop. I talk about this all the time, but it's surprising to me how few people actually engage in what we know scientifically works for goal setting. So we're going to review that Wish outcome, obstacles, plan. I want you to think about whooping everything in your life, these big goals and the mundane things, the next meeting you have and the big, big aspirational goals you have for your life. Our 10th big idea and our final big idea is playing the game well. This is all one big game. You get to write the rules to the game that is your life. Let's play that game well. Set challenging and meaningful yet doable goals for ourselves and go out and do our best, acting as if we already are that ideal version of ourselves. We'll talk about some William James wisdom there. And that is a quick look at our 10 big ideas. Let's dive in.
