Heroic | Brian Johnson on the Hero's Journey and the Heroic Movement

Foreign.

Hi there, My name is Colton Swab, and I'm the Director of Growth at Heroic, and I want to reach out to you with some quick context as.

To what you're about to watch and or listen to. So this recording was captured during a private meeting not initially intended to be shared publicly. This meeting was led by myself, and it was between me, Brian Johnson, the creator of Optimize, and the founder and CEO of Heroic, and Michael Balschan, chief of staff and head coach at Heroic, to discuss the messaging behind Heroic's mission to help create a world in which 51% of the world's population is flourishing by the year 2051. Mid recording, we realized that what we were discussing was so powerful that we had to share parts of it. So we decided in the end to share it in its entirety, completely unedited, aside from very few minor audio edits. And also, it's important to know that before I actually hit record on this meeting, we started the meeting with a one breath meditation in which we committed to playing our roles well and creating a world in which 51% of the world's population is flourishing by 2051. Before inviting you, our fellow hero and prospective partner, to join us in this conversation and in this movement. So we thought you would enjoy the raw behind the scenes look at how we're striving to create a business that embodies virtue while helping others do the same so we can change the world together. We hope you enjoy.

Sweet. All right, well, first things first, like, what inspired you to found Heroic? I know you mentioned it was election night. What about election night, like, moved you into action?

Read the letter, copy and paste as necessary. I'm not going to say it better than I said it there. And again, if we're in an actual, like, chat and I'm sharing it live, I do it. But literally I crafted that when I got. I've been working on that for 25 years and, you know, the last 25 days, you know, I've been grinding on that. That's the way I want to tell that story.

Gotcha. Yeah. Again, this is for my use to understand essentially your inner workings on it, but we'll just get.

Okay. Okay, perfect. No, no, I'm cool, dude. Okay, so then when you're sharing the story in copy, written form, copy and paste, please. That's my strong directive on that. I'm happy to riff on it if you think it'd be useful for us, just so you can hear it in. In real time. Would you like me to do that.

That's a good question. How about this? Why was it so important to you personally? Like, what did that event mean to you?

I'm a proud American. So when I get into more of the politics of it, you know, I wore a Ronald Reagan button when I was a kid, visited D.C. when I was, you know, 6 years old, 1980, proud, you know, Catholic boy, loved my president, wrote him a letter, got a picture signed back from him. That's my guy, you know, Navy Seals, etc. My politics have evolved significantly since then and I've been ashamed of our leadership. It's embarrassing for me. I can't point to our leadership, to my 9 year old and 4 year old with any, any level of pride. I don't even want them to know about him. He's a clown in our, in our family is how I describe him. He's vicious and is personified. And again, fine. It's a reflection of a reality TV society in which perfect. He is the perfect manifestation of viciousness that is manifested throughout our entire culture. Of course he would be popular in our culture, yet it's, it's distressing. And then when I woke up in the middle of the night and looked at it, I frankly couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that we were in the discussion in. The simple fact that nearly half of America voted for him is about as relevant to me as the fact that 70% are overweight and 42% are obese and X millions will get cancer. That in and of itself does not indicate that it's, it's a good thing. It indicates that our society is, is riddled with vicious cancer is what it represents for me. So anyway, I woke up and I was distraught. And frankly, I don't get sad and scared and enraged very often, but that's what I felt at 2, whatever in the morning. And then I immediately practiced my philosophy of what do I want? And then what am I going to do about it? In that moment, it was an epiphany moment for me. It was not a, oh, that'd be cool to create this and that. It was a, I want to create a more noble and virtuous world, principally for my kids. Full stop. This is scary. Like, needs to change. Like this can't, this isn't, okay, perfect. And literally I wrote that down and I wish I kept the papers because I don't keep my journals anymore, but. Second question. Okay, that's what you want. You want to see a more noble and virtuous world. What are you going to do about it. And in that moment, heroic was born. And it was not a thought. It was a. It's time, dude. You've been. You've been bifurcating your energy. You've been ambivalent for too long. It's time to come up, and it's time to serve. Heroically create the answer to the social dilemma which is the root cause of so much of the pandemic levels of anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, alienation, personally and socially, all the other stuff. Let's go. And literally, it was born at almost exactly 2:43, which of course, we use playfully because it means something for us. But literally, that was like, probably, if not exactly, almost exactly when it was formed. That's the origin story. And that's why I tattooed my body with a dude. And all in all, pardon my mouth. 51, 51, 20, 51, dude. And that's what people feel. And this is when we come back to a note. I said, I just trust you, you know, and it was a separate note where someone said, I feel the spirit rising in you. And then back to the other individual. I've never trusted, but I trust you. That is our number one thing, is that I've strived to have a level of purity, which is my obsession with Phil Stotts. I got to be pure. It can't be about me. I've got to have fierce ambition and personal humility. And I'm not the guy that's showing you my 22 houses who's saying all the right things so that he can impress you with all of his extrinsic. So that level of, like, I actually mean what I say. And then the other woman, which is I want to help create a more virtuous and noble world, principally for my kids. And I'm going to do everything I cam between here and my dying breath to make it happen. Let's go. That felt sense is what allows us to raise $11 million in 100 hours. It's what's going to allow us to raise $185 million from our crowd. Gets me tears my eyes, dude. In two years, you know, and it's simultaneously about me and not about me. And it's about the movement and caring enough to do something about it, which is another consistent theme. Thank you for caring enough to actually do this. Anyway, that's the emotional, intense recap of election night for me.

No, that's perfect. I mean, that's what I want to get to. So let's go and connect that to the others. Then. So you mentioned, like, your own ambivalence for too long. Do you think that people who are potential heroic founding members and partners and investors have also been ambivalent for too long, dude.

Literally this morning. Founding member note it's time someone. What do we quote, unquote, Michael, it might have been one of the grabs I sent to you. Give me two seconds and I'll see if I can find it. To finally step into the life that's meant for me. Someone said it's everything I've been searching for. So, yeah, I think that's a great question that. I see where you're going. I see what's happening here. And yeah, I mean, I'm not the hero of the story. We got to keep on remembering that I'm not. Again, I'm an exemplar who happens to be striving to live as well as I can. But I'm the guide in the story. Of course they are the hero. But can I inspire you with how I'm striving to show up heroically and challenge you to do it in your own idiosyncratic way? Michael sent me a little grab. Send that to Colton and me right now as what you most admire me, Michael. That I think embodies it really, really well. All of us have that ambivalence. Every single one of us. Full stop. Everyone. No question, no exception. What one can be, one must be. We can call that need soul oxygen. Right. It's the fundamental human condition 2500 year challenge. We are not, just, by the way, to say it out loud, an answer to the social dilemma. We are an answer to the 2,500-year-old dilemma, which is how do you express the best version of yourself in service to something bigger than yourself, which is we've had a quote, toxic society for 2500 years. This isn't new. It's just the technology has amplified everything to go to the exponentially worst possible viciousness and it's dominated our culture. So it becomes even more threatening to literally, you know, the existence of our species and all that stuff. I never go there, so we don't need to go there. But, yeah, every single one of us has the ambivalence. Welcome to humanity. It's the call to hero's journey. You feel it. Pay attention to it. Answer the call. I mean, that is the definition of the hero's journey. There's a voice within you. Good luck numbing that. And you can choose to go neo on it. Would you got a choice? You always have A choice. Morpheus, Neo, always have a choice. Which pill do you want? Do you want to wake up or do you want to stay asleep? And most people are choosing to stay asleep, and then they don't even know they're asleep, obviously. And the whole point from the Matrix to Buddha, the awakened one, I mean, again, is this is it, and it's the golden Buddha. You have that within you. By the way, getting people to watch Finding Joe is a really good idea. I'm in it. I'm alongside Deepak Laird, Tony Hawk. It's a great film. We inspired Pat Solomon to create it. Literally. Michael's going to tell that story a little bit more, but he created Finding Joe after reading my philosopher's notes on it. So he became heroic, showing us all how to become heroic after being inspired by my work, guided by me. After was the first person he interviewed. And then now we're operationalizing that wisdom because it's inspiring. But how do you actually go into the unknown and go battle the dragons with friends and with guides, then come back and give your gift to the world, which is my three step arc to the hero's journey. You. You have to answer that call that you're talking about right now, that ambivalence. Then you got to go meet your guide, meet your buddies, and go conquer your dragons. Then you got to come back and give us all you got. Then you got to repeat it, and you got to realize it's never going to end. And we need you to go through as many of those cycles as quickly as you can. Like you mean it because the world needs you.

Love it. Let's go.

Dude, that was pretty good.

That's pretty good.

All right. You get me on fire here, Colton. Great work. Back to your. Your questions here.

Well, let's see how. Let's keep it going also. Yeah, you mentioned before, I got all.

The time you want, by the way, dude, this is important to me. You're important, and this is the time. I'm obviously feeling pretty good, and we're on a roll, so let's continue.

Yeah, I appreciate you coming on recovering, too. I know what that feels like.

I'll just add a little, like, this is awesome. And there's some. There's some things you've shared, Brian, that are. That are next level depth and next level movement. So I think this is great. And concision, like, just the conciseness. I'm really excited about the reps we just did. Michael. I was thinking about that when I go to the studio that I just shook the rust off. You know, we just did 10 hours of teaching, essentially. Great questions, Colton. Keep us going.

So you already mentioned the status quo is most people are asleep but don't know they're asleep. So what do most people think their problem is?

Most people think their problem is they don't have enough Instagram followers or money in the bank or definition on their abs. And science is unequivocal. If you are pursuing those extrinsic measures of success which society seduces us to pursue relentlessly and exclusively, then even if you are successful in your pursuit of those extrinsic things, you are, and I quote, less psychologically stable than people who are playing the right game. The ultimate game, which is objective one, and heroic basic training, which is threefold. Become a better person so you can not get more Instagram followers, make more money, and have more definition in your abs, but so you can be more connected to your loved ones and make a contribution to your community. Three things, very simple. Become a better person in service to something bigger than yourself while connecting to people in your world. That's intrinsic motivation. People don't get that. And waking up to that reality is what every great teacher across every great spiritual tradition has tried to teach from Morpheus to Neo in the Matrix. Wake up. You have a choice. Do you want to take this pill or do you want to take the other? To the Buddha, who literally was named the Awakened One. The Buddha is the one who is awake. And what did he want us to wake up to? To our infinite potential. End of the fact, by the way, that you already have everything you need. You just need to chip away the things that are getting in the way, most of which are piled on to your consciousness in a very, very sick society, and buy a very, very success.

That's beautiful. So from that context, what is the alternative that you're trying to create? What is it that heroic does differently?

Again, very simply, we want to create a world in which 51% of the world's population is flourishing by the year 2051. Full stop. Unapologetically ambition ambitious, as you know, tattooed myself with both heroic N51, 2051, and very importantly, I tattooed my other arm with how we will achieve that, how I will help aspire to achieve that individually and how we will help others to do it. At the end of the day, it's not about accumulating all the extrinsic rewards. It's about showing up more and more consistently as that best version of yourself. As you know, the ultimate game, Objective 1 in basic training features ancient wisdom and modern science. Aristotle and Martin Seligman, the founder of the positive psychology movement, join us as proxies for ancient wisdom, modern science. You ask them, hey, guys, what's the ultimate purpose of life? Aristotle will smile and say, we had the same challenge 2,500 years ago you have today. It's a little bit more challenging for you because it's all exacerbated by technology, but same challenge. And the summum bonum. The highest good of life is to live with what we Aristotle says call eudaimonia. Beautiful word that etymologically means you good daimon soul. Eudaimonia, good soul, right? So you have this best version of you sitting here all day, every day, waiting for you to pay attention to it, right? Different traditions will call that your conscience or whatever. Then you also have. That's your daimon. You also have a little demon, which is just the diminutive of daimon. Daimon demon. The question is, which voice are you paying attention to? Right? And the ultimate game of life is to more and more consistently pay attention to the daimon express the best version of yourself. Then you know what you feel. Eudaimonia, very difficult word to translate into English. It means something like just a joyful sense of meaning and purpose. And you know you're doing what you're here to do, right? You're not second guessing yourself all the time. It's not. Doesn't mean it's easy. In fact, it's going to be hard. But you know, you're showing up, you're doing your best, and that feels really, really good. Now, how do you translate eudaimonia into English? You translate it into the single word that Martin Seligman, the founder of the positive psychology movement, chose to name his most recent book after Flourish. When you are living with eudaimonia, you are flourishing. Ancient wisdom, modern science degree, same one word answer. Eudaimonia. Flourishing is the ultimate purpose of life. And how heroic is different is that we're not selling you on how to go get a Lamborghini that you can stand in front of in front of your house. It's on the cliff. So you can put that up on Instagram and go blow up the world with your awesome. We're saying there's a more important game. And the more important game is to show up more and more powerfully as the best version of yourself. And how do you do that? You ask Aristotle, and he answers in a single word, another difficult word to translate into English. That word we translate as virtue or excellence, but it too has deeper meaning, Something closer to truly expressing that best version of yourself not once in a while when you feel like it, but moment to moment to moment. And the way I describe that is imagine these two lines. You're capable of being this. Your daimon eudaimonic self is. And if you're actually being this, there's a gap, and it's in that gap and only in that gap in which regret, anxiety, disillusionment, depression exist. The ultimate game is to close that gap. When you close that gap and you live with rt, what happens? The byproduct of that is you feel eudaimonia, which feels great. And the good news is you don't need to wait a year or five years or 10 years until you have a million Instagram followers or you're on Oprah or you have a best selling book in order to live with art and to feel great. Nor do you need to wait a year or 10 or 25 to be heroic. The moment you live with orte, you are heroic. And it's exciting because if you fall short of your standards, which you and I will inevitably all the time, you have a choice right now. How fast can you get back? How fast can you live with arte? Because in that moment, boom, you're back. You're express expressing that next best version of yourself. And that's the ultimate game of life. That's objective one in basic training. It's also module one in the optimized coach program. And it is how we change people's lives. The moment you flip that switch and you realize that I was seduced to play the wrong game and in fact, I can do this and I can flip the switch at any given moment then. And I got so many notes recently from people saying, I just started optimized coach class 8. I've already changed my life, literally. I mean, it's incredible how many people have said this in days, in a few days, in 10 days and 14 days, boom. Now I get it. I've been seduced. Now I know what I need to do and I know how to go do it. And it feels great. It's a long answer to your short question, Colton, but those are my thoughts.

I love it. That's. That's perfect. That's everything I ever wanted. So.

And then I'm going to, I'm going to say, michael, you need to share this. You need to go through systematically and set the context. And you do this before you get to the heroes. Do my Two videos. One, I guess it's today and then tomorrow and then share this. Share the context of. Colton and I are talking about what we're talking about and we kind of went off and have us here. I don't want to be alone. I want us to be here. I want people to see us doing this. And it's real. That's the behind the scenes. We're creating a movement. This is what we're doing. And it's spontaneous. And we didn't intend to share this publicly.

We.

We recorded it for our own purposes. But there's something. Dude, this is. This is awesome. What do you think, Colton?

That's perfect. I'm just going to keep going deeper. That way we keep going to the flow because as we pull back those layers, that's when some of the more unconscious stuff comes out. Okay, fine.

No, just to confirm aligned on sharing. I'll go through and edit any pieces that need to be edited. But this is awesome. And I had the thought, like, dude, you're so ready for basic training. I'm like, oh, my God, basic training is going to be sick, dude. Obviously bombs and whatnot. Yeah, we're good.

Should be good. Well, so who are you trying to unify? Is it the people who are asleep or is it the ones who are on the verge of waking up? Like, when you think of the best people for heroic in these early days, like, who are they?

Yeah. So ultimately it's. It's everyone. This is an impulse within each of us. As Abraham Maslow says, what one can be, one must be. There is no greater fundamental need than the need to actualize. Having said that, we are very, very focused from a business and marketing perspective on in the diffusion of adoption curve what is known as the innovators or the early adopters, that asymptotic passionate group of people who when they hear us, they literally say, and I got this note so many times. I'm home. I found my tribe. I'm in the south of Louisiana trying to deal with systemic racism. And I'm alone. No one else is talking about these things. I need help. I need a community in which gives me tears in my eyes in which I can show up most powerfully. That was this morning's one of the notes that came in. So we are fiercely, unapologetically preaching to the preachers and preaching to the choir and saying, let's go. We've got something here. Ancient wisdom, modern science, all the eudaimonic virtues, driven things that we've talked about that no one else really is talking about in a, in, in general, full stop, let alone in a way that combines that with Metalab, Tinder, sexy, you know, testimony for personal growth, unapologetic intensity, humility, true service, not lip service to, you know, making a difference so we can pat our wallets, but like true impact and creative integrity, etc. Um, so innovators, early adopters, unapologetically, I do not care about the laggards, clearly, or the late adopters. If they don't think that we're ridiculous, we're doing it wrong. We're intense, we stand in that unapologetically. Yet at the same time, they look at it and they're like, there's actually something here. This is different. This isn't the same old person running on a stage clearly selling me whatever they think they need to sell me to go buy their next house. There's something here. And so ultimately I believe, and I know because I just had a guy this morning tell me that. What was the line? I'm going to look for this right now because it was so good. The one on Jesus. Michael, let me find it. So beautiful, devout Christian, clearly, who said, you know, why do you want to join Heroic? To become the absolute best version of myself, he says. Then he says, I just wanted to share. I've looked at many programs to achieve the same results. Brian, your program really resonated. I am all in and committed to becoming the best version of myself for Jesus, the world, my family and my friends. So our ability to take true, deep, ancient philosophical and theological truths and to package them in a secular way that simultaneously respects those deep, deep theological and faith based truths while allowing for a shared convergence at that ultimate truth. And the idiosyncratic expression individually is one of the things I'm most proud of in our work with Coach and most excited about going forward. To have devout rabbis, to have, you know, bishops and priests and ministers, to have Muslims who point to me and say, you are a devout follower of Muhammad. You know, this is, he talks about arete, this is, you come. And then of course, across the philosophical and spiritual spectrum beyond that is something that, that deeply inspires me both now and over the long run.

That's awesome. So I'm going to, we're going to go somewhere that's sort of like a different angle on this one. Because the best way to explain what something is without describing it is actually describing what it's not and what it stands against. And the better we can talk about that, whether like directly, just like throwing Stones or just sort of talking about what we stand against. Easiest way to get into that is what pisses you off.

That's good. What pisses me off at the most fundamental level. And it creates what, what Phil Stutz would call cosmic rage. So this is less rage at an individual per se and more just rage at the cosmic disintegrity of a thing. Right. So at the highest level, what triggers my cosmic rage is viciousness. And I believe that every single challenge we face in the world today, from the political polarization to the lack of health to the anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, environmental degradation, political, as I already said, polarization, social injustice, comes down to one very simple thing. It's vice versus virtue, viciousness versus virtuosity, or being virtuous. And again, this isn't a new challenge. This is a 2,500-year-old challenge exacerbated today. So that creates rage within me that was exemplified and kind of like brought to a point. Simmering, simmering simmering to boil as I describe quoting Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson's effect on him with the election. It was just, it was just a case study in viciousness vis a vis the potential for virtue that creates the deepest level of grounded, cosmic, creative rage. And again, Michelangelo said, criticize by creating. It's really easy to go into an echo chamber and complain about things in the world. That's super easy and do nothing to contribute to the solution. And in fact, you're contributing to the problem when all you do is look at the polarization and throw stones at it from your side, thinking you're 100% right. No one's 100% right. There's a partial truth to everything. And ultimately, as Gandhi and every great teacher has said, be the change you want to see paraphrased, show up, do the hard work to have the strength for two to be truly heroic. And go from being a victim complaining about everything, criticizing everything, to a creator saying what do I want? To a hero saying what am I going to do about it? And then showing up with wisdom, self mastery, courage, love, hope, gratitude, curiosity, zest, all the other virtues I get emotional talking about that every faith tradition across all time have told us is most important to embody. And that science has confirmed leads to a healthy, happy, flourishing, purpose driven, meaningful life that creates rage on the highest and most important level. And then, you know, I can go petty on it and look at political leadership and look at different things, both sides, by the way, and just lack of integrity across the spectrum. And then, you know, I can go even more specific into the self development world and it's almost exclusive. Focus on with some again, lip service paid to the intrinsic stuff, of course, because that's important. But really, if you peel back even just a layer or two, you see extrinsic. Here's how you make my money quick without doing a whole lot. And here's how you get a lot of Instagram followers and here how you get, here's how you get passive income. Here's how you get that six pack AB so you can finally show off to those Instagram followers. You now have, well again snapping that picture of your Lamborghini in front of your beach house. I think most of self development focuses on those extrinsic variables which frankly makes people less psychologically stable. It exacerbates the problem and we got to step back and look at and go, I have no problem with any of those extrinsic things. I personally frankly don't care about them. I live a very simple life. I admire Epictetus, who his clay, you know, pot was good enough for him. He doesn't need the fancy thing, does it? Do what he needs to do. Good, perfect. I'm playing a bigger, more important game. But fine, let that at least be a byproduct. Those external, you know, the fame, the wealth, the power, these are not unimportant things in our society. But win the real game, let that be a byproduct in service to something bigger than yourself. That would be another source of potential rage. And I'm not going to name names because it's just not important, but there are a lot of examples we can reference and people know it. I've said this for years. When you go to one of those events or you go to one of those websites, you know, even if you buy their product that you just had your buttons pushed a bit, dah dah dah. We have strived to never do that, to honor the best within someone, to not make shortcuts, to not push those buy now buttons that are frankly easy to push and erode trust. Our thing is, what's the right thing to do? How do we make an invitation to join our community, join our movement if our values resonate with yours and you feel inspired to do so. And if not, perfect. We're here and we strive to be worthy of you when and if you decide to revisit us. And that's the ultimate game that we want to play and we're committed to obviously playing at the highest possible level. We can.

That'S awesome. I love that phrase of cosmic rage as well. So there's this 25 year old or 2500 year old problem that's been simmering to boil for a lot of people. And culture itself seems to be keeping a locked in these intrinsic extrinsic goals. They're brought up thinking that way. What. What is all of that trying to keep secret? If whether it's culture or the people who are purposefully doing it for their own gain, like what are they tricking people out of and trying to keep secret?

I like the word, the secret. If you want to cue some cosmic rage and not thatness, say the secret to me that that's a good way to. To do it. I kid, but I'm serious. I don't think any of this is a secret. I think it's the most obvious truth hidden in plain sight that we choose to ignore. And again, this is a 2,500-year-old dilemma, not a new challenge. And again, the ancient Hindu scriptures talk about this of, you know, hey, where do we hide the ultimate truth? Do we put it underwater? Now people eventually go to the bottom of the ocean. Do we put it at the top of the mountain? No, people will eventually go to the top of the mountains and find it. Where do we put it? Where do we put it? Where do we put it? Oh, put it within the individual. That's the last place they're going to think to look. But yet that truth is there. It's in your diamond. You already know everything you need to know. You know that you don't need to be blowing yourself up with another scroll through on Instagram. You know that you don't need to be doing X, Y and Z. And we've all got our X, Y and Z Kryptonite, the behaviors that bring us down. The voice is already there. Always. It's omnipresent. Now again, the less you pay attention to it, the more you want to numb yourself from it via whatever your preferred numbing agent is, whether that's alcohol or other drugs or binging on Netflix or Phil yelling at your kids or whatever else you do to ignore that voice. But it's always there. And that's. That's both a. It's a gift if we allow it to be a gift. If you slow down long enough, you realize you've been playing the wrong game, but yet you have the opportunity to play it well now. And when you fall short again, which you will, then you can play it again. Right now, flip the switch, get back to Arta, etc. That's it. And all pause. You're getting fired up.

So we're going to keep going a little bit deeper. We're basically towards the end and some of it you hit in the beginning, but I'm going to loop back around just to take it all full circle. So this is. You obviously answered the last one, Hidden scandals being about intrinsic truth and truth across all these cultures. The next one is like, why do people have a right to better than what they're getting now? Why should they not settle for the way things are?

Yeah, I think this is deeper than right. I think this is. It is the most fundamental human need. So again, Abraham Maslow, if I had to summarize my philosophy in one word, it would be Aristotle's Arete, which again has closed the gap between who you're capable of being and who you're actually being. So you can experience the summum bonum, the highest good of eudaimonia, joyful flourishing. If I had to summarize my entire philosophy in one sentence, it would be Abraham Maslow's abridged self actualizing blurb, which is what one can be, one must be. So Abraham Maslow, of course, created the hierarchy of needs. He talks about the basic needs of safety and shelter and all these things. And then you get safe self esteem, you get relationships. And as you ascend the hierarchy of needs, the need to self actualize, the need to express that best version of yourself becomes a fundamental need, I like to say, as real as your need to breathe, it becomes again, the way I like to frame it is soul oxygen. The same way where if you do not have oxygen, that is your most fundamental need, that's all that matters right now. I got to breathe. I do not have oxygen. When you get to a certain point, which by the way is a point at which all of us who are listening to this or watching this, we're thinking about joining heroic. It's a point to which we have arrived. We're at this point the need. Not the right, but the need. The impulse for you to express the best version of yourself is as real as your need to breathe. Yet society is telling you to keep on chasing Instagram followers and a bigger payday so you can have a bigger mortgage, so you can do whatever you think you need to do to be more famous, more hot, more wealthy. And the closer you get to that he donna treadmill, the further away you are from the thing that matters. It's not making you any happier anyway, when we recognize that fundamental need. Again, you flip the switch. Ultimate game. Then you forge antifragile confidence. Then you optimize your energy, your work and your love. Then you make today a masterpiece. Then you master yourself as you dominate your fundamentals and activate your soul force, which is the hero's superpower. And life changes like that. Except when you go back to the old patterns. But now you know you've awakened and now you know. Flip the switch back. Let me get back to expressing the best version of myself playing the ultimate game. Again, a long answer to your short question, but that's what I think about that.

That's amazing. I think I actually have everything I need at this point. That last piece was the missing piece. The. It's not the right. The need to express the best version of yourself is as real as the need to breathe. That is definitely something I can use because there is that tangible feeling there. Also. You, of course, maybe you don't. I don't know. And like the previously when I just taught courses and whatnot, one of them was on Maslow and like his latest research, like right before he died about self transcendence.

And like second pyramid, we're super aligned. So goosebumps. No, we're going to go there because I literally just wrote down that self actualizing is not the final point. Of course in Maslow's hierarchy there comes a point at which you've actually expressed enough of yourself to be in the process. You're never done. You're always iteratively self actualizing, but yet then you transcend the self. And your entire life is dedicated to giving yourself to the world. There's a word for that. It's called heroic. You are now living heroically. You are a protector of the values you cherish. Your family, your community, the world at large. And that's the perfect spiraling up arc to the ultimate need that we are fulfilling individually and collectively. That if you use heroic then you will flourish. And if enough of us use heroic, then we will change the world together. It's the perfect way to kind of capture what we're talking about. So I appreciate you bringing us there and having the background and the wisdom and the consciousness to guide us through such a beautiful discussion. Excited to continue to tell our story and feel blessed to have your support in doing it.

Of course. Yeah, I mean, weird synchronicity juju. Like literally before I joined heroic, the course I was teaching was about out how to cross that threshold from self actualization to self transcendence. And the last page of Notes I had on it was like, it has something to do with the hero's journey, that being the moment where like you cross the threshold and actually can return to the tribe in service of others. And I was literally doing research on that when we met.

Okay, so I'm going to go there. I'm going to go there for one more point because this is important. You cannot bypass the process of actualizing. You get in a lot of spiritual trouble when you think that the point of life is to transcend before you've actually included and before you've actually got a firm grip on your ego. So there's a longer philosophical chat here. Most people want to get rid of the ego or dissolve the ego or kill the ego before they even had hold of it. And you can't let go of something you never had a firm grasp on. So the first most important thing in the process remains self actualizing. You need to have ferocious self discipline in order to exercise the wisdom, the self mastery, and the courage and the love and the hope and the gratitude, the curiosity, such that you're actually capable of making a contribution. And if you don't do that hard work, which again, is the whole point of the app, we're going to help you move from theory to practice to mastery. And you look at this wall of heroes, you know, from Gandhi to everybody else, these are fiercely disciplined human beings who did the work to get that sense of self mastery, such that they were actually in a position to make a meaningful contribution. And if you don't, then you're actually exacerbating the problem. And again, there's two ways to look at that. One, you never even try to actualize, let alone transcend. The other, you try to too quickly transcend and you have nothing to give because you didn't have that concrete sense of self, which becomes a jumping off point into a meaningful, creative, individual, iconoclastic, idiosyncratic contribution to the world. Again, longer philosophical chat, but love it. Great chat, dude. Excited to have you take this and do your thing and also to be able to take this and do our thing, sharing with our community.

Awesome. That's perfect. Yeah, that's everything I need. I think you nailed it. So thanks for taking the time to do it and going deep with me and letting all that, all that out. I think, I think some next level clarity is coming through on this.

Perfect. I want to share this with the entire team, unedited from the beginning. I want them to see what we just did because you just did a great job and you helped me do a great job at articulating it. So wonderful work. I celebrated Mal in a video the other day celebrating you right now. To everyone, this is how it's done. Good job, dude. Appreciate you bringing out the best in me and playing your role really, really well to help us go out and achieve. 51 2051. Starting with you and me and that hero that was just hanging out with us. And it's so cool because they're actually hanging out with us with the unintended public sharing. So great work and anything I can do to support, I'm here.

You, me, us.

I appreciate it. You've been awesome and also thanks, Michael. I appreciate you too. And that's a wrap.

Teamwork makes the dream work. Day one. Let's go.

See you guys. I'll share this with the team.

Awesome. Okay. See you.

Sa.