How Can We Live a Heroic Life in the Modern World?

Hi, this is Brian with a quick message. Have you heard about heroic yet? It's the new social training platform we've been building with the same company that builds Slack and Tinder and Uber Eats. Short story, Heroic is all about helping you move from theory to practice to mastery. So you can show up as the best, most heroic version of yourself. So we can change the world together. We, one person at a time. Starting with you and me and us today. Well, technically, starting April 9th, that's when we're launching. Super excited. Learn more and watch a little video from me and join us as a founding member at Heroic US Day one. Let's go. Have you seen the great documentary on the hero's journey called Finding Joe Now? I happened to be in it alongside Deepak Chopra, Robin Sharma, Sir Ken Robinson, and some other great teachers. And fun fact, Pat Solomon, the director of Finding Joe, was actually inspired to make the film after reading my philosopher's notes on Joseph Campbell's work. He also did just flew out to Austin to set up our heroic studio and is in fact filming this video right now with our crew in our studio. Pat, come on and say hi. Look at us. We're so lucky we got Pat's on. What's up, brother? Yeah, Stoked to be here, man. Life is good. I sent out a bat signal. Pat needs you create a heroic studio for us. Took literally the next flight out on a plane that day. Yeah. I love you, man. Thanks for having me. And I'm super stoked to be a part of this. Day one. Let's go. There we go. Fun little interlude. Now, in many ways, heroic is the operationalization of all the wisdom in that movie that Pat created, answering the question of how we can live a heroic life in the modern world. But we need to get really clear about one very important thing. I'm not the hero of this story. You are now. Every hero gets a guide. Harry Potter got Dumbledore. Luke got Yoda. Neo got Morpheus. I'm kinda like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, knocking on the door of your hobbit hole, encouraging you to go on your heroic quest, only I have a little less hair and don't have a beard. And you don't live in a hobbit hole. So I guess maybe that makes me more like Professor Xavier encouraging his X Men to show up and give the world all they've got. Either way, for the hero's journey to officially begin, the hero, and that would be you, needs to answer the call. If you don't, well, then Things get a little more interesting, as Joseph Campbell says, and I'm actually the person who talks about this in the documentary. If you don't answer the call, then to put it very directly, you will suffer. Now, why is that? Because at some point in your evolution, and you're at that point, if you're this far into this video, actualizing your potential and showing up as the best, most heroic version of yourself goes from a kind of sort of nice to have to a must have. Which is why the great psychologist Abraham Maslow tells us that what one can be, one must be. I love that phrase. In fact, if I was going to summarize my entire philosophy in a single sentence, that would probably be it. And by the way, if I was going to summarize my entire philosophy in a single word, that word would be the Greek word arete, which I now have tattooed on my body. So back to Maslow. In his hierarchy of needs, he describes this need to actualize your potential as a fundamental human, human need. He tells us that at some point in our lives, this need to express the best version of ourselves becomes just as real as our need to breathe. I like to think of it as soul oxygen. And if you're feeling like you're gasping for a little bit of soul meaning era in your life, look at the gap between who you're capable of being right now and who you're actually being. And know this. All the great teachers echo this wisdom. If you study ancient wisdom and modern science, what you'll see is an astonishing coherence among all the wisdom traditions. They all say that the ultimate purpose of life is to express the best version of yourself in service to something bigger than yourself, to close that gap. And they all say that if there's a gap between who you're capable being and who you're actually being you in any given moment, then you will suffer. It's in that gap in which anxiety, depression, disillusionment exists. We need to close it. And if you don't, you will feel less energized, less productive, and less connected than you could feel, and that you should feel. And that pain is actually a good thing, as it points to what's missing in our lives. Jim Rohn puts it brilliantly. He tells us, and I quote, we will all experience one pain or the other. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. But the difference is that the pain of discipline, he says, weighs only ounces, while the pain of regret weighs tons. In other words, you can experience the subtle pain of closing the gap now, by doing what you know you could and should be doing during those moments where you may currently be taking the easy way out, indulging in suboptimal behaviors. That pain of closing the gap is measured in ounces. Or you can choose to experience pain in the form of regret by getting to the end of your life and realizing you didn't do the little things you know you could have done day in and day out. Oops. You failed to fulfill your highest potential because you didn't flip the switch and move from theory to practice to mastery. Today, that pain that weighs tons. And we actually have an exercise in heroic to help you feel that pain now so you don't have to feel it at the end of your life. I call it a quick trip to hell. You can go there now. Imagine you're at the end of your life. You're literally on your deathbed. As you look at that version of yourself in your mind, you can tell that you didn't quite live up to the vision of who you knew you could have been. It's heartbreaking. Then it gets worse. Imagine the door to your room opening and in walks the version of you you could have become. They're radiantly alive, confident, poised, clearly fulfilled in every sense. Now that version of you looks at the version of you on your deathbed that failed to actualize your potential and can only offer a consoling look. Then, boom, you're gone. Some would call that hell. To meet the version of yourself that you could have become when it was too late to do anything about it. The good news? It's not too late to do something about it. I don't care where you are in your life, and I've been blessed to serve teenagers to elders. You can become that best version of yourself now. But very important, we need to have the wisdom and self mastery and courage and love to stop numbing ourselves from the pain in our lives. Whether that's with alcohol or Netflix binging or endless scrolling on Instagram or whatever you do to numb the pain. And we all do something in our less enlightened moments. And then we need to start showing up more powerfully so we can close that gap and experience the deep sense of joy and connection and fulfillment we all crave. So helping you close that gap between who you're capable of being and who you're actually being so you can become more energized, more productive, and more connected than you've ever been in your life by moving from theory to practice to mastery is exactly what heroic is all about and what I am so fiercely committed to helping you achieve. And that's exactly what that Greek word arete means. The one I have tattooed right there. Close the gap between who you're capable being and who you're actually being. Moment to moment to moment. When you do that in service of something greater than yourself, you become heroic, which is the word I have tattooed on the other arm and what our entire mission and movement are all about. Arete Heroic. And here's the good news. The moment in which you decide to step up and show up as that best, most heroic version of yourself. It's like flipping the switch in a dark room. Suddenly that dark room, no matter how long it had been dark, is filled with light. Of course in life we can't just flip the switch once and call it done. And all the self help books that promise that quick fix are part of the problem here. It's hard work to keep that light switch on. We need to show up day in and day out. You if we want to fundamentally and permanently change our lives. And again, helping you do that is the precise point of our Heroic social training platform. All of which leads us to the most important part of our chat. How will heroic help you close the gap and show up more powerfully? Let's start with an overview of the theory in basic training and then we'll chat about how we'll help you put that theory into practice every day. Single day. So I've spent half of the last 25 years as a founder, CEO building and selling two social platforms and the other half as a philosopher, reading, writing and teaching while creating all the wisdom you now have access to, along with hundreds of thousands of people from every country in the world. And after training over 10,000 people from over 115 countries as part of our 300 day heroic coach certification program, which has been scientifically proven to change lives. I've condensed the process of becoming your best self into the seven objectives of basic training, which is the first training program you get in the Heroic app as a founding member on April 9th. Hi, this is Brian again. I hope you enjoyed getting a little more wisdom in less time. If you want to take what you just learned and move from theory to to practice to mastery so you can become the best, most heroic version of yourself in just three minutes a day, head to Heroic Us and watch the short video to learn more about heroic. As always, let's change the world one person at a time. Together. Starting with you and me and us today.