How to Make 2023 THE Greatest Year Ever (Seriously...do this!)

Hi, this is Brian with Heroic and I am thrilled to welcome you to Greatest Year Ever 101. You'll notice I've got a little clicker in my hand today. I don't usually have one with these 101s, but this talk is going to be based on a keynote that I give and it's also based on a deck that we give to our heroic coaches that they can use to give presentations. So when you see me kind of working this thing, that that's what's up. Now let's get to work. If you give me around an hour, I promise to help you do three things. Number one, we're gonna help you activate what we call your heroic potential. While number two, fundamentally in permanently changing your life, I am fiercely committed to doing literally that. How do we fundamentally and permanently change your life? We, while very importantly making this year the greatest year of your life. Of course, in an unending string of such years. Because now you fundamentally and permanently changed your life. Period. Now, how are we going to do that? It's simple. Our entire approach is all about moving you from theory to practice to mastery together. Not someday, but. But today. Again, theory, practice, mastery together. Today you're going to hear me talk about that a lot. The fact is, you don't need to read another book. You don't need to listen to another podcast. You don't need to watch another class like this. You need to do the things you already know you could be doing more and more consistently. Moving again from theory to practice to mastery. Now, Greatest Year Ever 101 has two parts. In this video we're going to cover. This is part one, we're going to cover the theory and then in a separate video, we're going to cover the practice again. You can watch the full length videos at Heroic Us Gye for greatest year ever. Check it out for more. Now part one, in the theory, we're going to talk about what ancient wisdom and modern science say in in terms of how we can play the ultimate game well and truly show up and dominate. In part two, we're gonna go into the practice and I'm gonna show you how I personally use the Heroic app every single day to activate my heroic potential. With that high level, let's get to work. Right after I tell you a little bit more about me and about heroic. If this is the first time that you've heard of me and heroic, here's the short story. If you already know my work, you already know this story, but basically, I'm 50% philosopher or lover of wisdom and 50% founder CEO. And I'm 101% all in. Tattooed my body with heroic and a 30 year target to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing. And by 2051. Longer chat now, as a founder CEO, I built and sold two social platforms before Facebook. One was called E Teams. It served 3 million teams around the world. Little League Baseball used the platform that we helped create at one point. And then my second company was called zods. John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, invested in that business, nearly bought it. It was for people who wanted to make a difference in the world, et cetera. Longer chat that's me as a founder CEO. Me as a philosopher, lover of wisdom. Well, I read a lot, I taught a lot and I repeated that process creating something called Philosopher's notes, which you might have heard of, or read 1 or 10. I got 600 of those on some of the best self development books out there. And then I distilled all of that wisdom, ancient wisdom, modern science into a protocol. And that research shows changes lives. We worked with Sonia Liebomirsky to help test our 300 day mastery series program, which is part of our Heroic Coach program. She said that if she didn't do the research herself, and I'm paraphrasing, she would have thought the data was fake. It was so impactful on people's lives. We'll talk more about that, but that's really important to me. Everything we do is grounded in ancient wisdom and modern science and we want to prove and have shown and that our protocol works. So everything I'm going to tell you about today and encourage you to do, we've done research on and seen early results that are really, really positive. Now all that's nice and warm and fuzzy, you take half, 50% philosopher, 50% CEO, and you bring it together into heroic. Heroic. Public Benefit Corporation is a company that I started on election night 2020. I'll save the longer conversation for another time. Woke up in the middle of the night and said, look, we can do better than this. And I thought, you know what? It's time for me to come out of my hermitage, to integrate my background and to create an answer to the social dilemma. If you've ever seen the Social Dilemma by Tristan Harris, super powerful. Look at the unintended catastrophic consequences of these social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc. That are making money by mining your attention and selling it to the highest bidder. So much of the problems we face today as A society are rooted in that. Anyway, founded Heroic Public Benefit Corporation to create a social training platform that could literally change the world. And we were blessed to make history as the first company to ever raise funds $5 million via the new crowdfunding regulations with the support of 2,500 investors in our community from 75 countries around the world. Now, more than anything that showed us that the world is hungry for heroes. We want to see a more noble and virtuous world for ourselves, for our families, et cetera. And we're blessed to have the support of literally thousands of investors from around the world. Now, again, all that's nice and warm and fuzzy. But what is heroic? Well, let's go to my friend John Mackey. Again, friend and mentor, started Whole Foods founder, former CEO, big fan of Heroic, engaged in the app. And he told me, and I quote, John, that Heroic is the best self development platform in the world. Now, I can't say that out loud, but I can have John say that out loud on behalf of us. Thank you, John. Very kind of you to say. Now we'll talk more about what that means. But we also think of ourselves as a global crowdfunded movement where personal transformation leads to massive social change. We're all about changing the world one person at a time, together, starting with you and me and us. Not someday, but today. Now, another way to think about it is we're kind of like calm or headspace or better up combined with a Facebook, an Instagram, a Twitter, a YouTube, a LinkedIn, etc. Only instead of trying to get rid of your stress, we want to help you learn how to use it as fuel to become the best, most heroic version of yourself. And instead of trying to hijack your attention, we want to leverage the best of social and persuasive technology to help you increase your well being and show up as that best, most heroic version of yourself. Again, as I said, we think of ourselves as an answer to the social dilemma and we aspire to be an answer to the social dilemma. Tristan Harris talks about the inhumane technology we see in a Facebook or Instagram or a Twitter. Well, he wants to help create more humane technology, which is of course incredibly important and admirable. But we say, what would heroic technology look like? Inhumane, humane and heroic. Using the best of social and persuasive technology for the absolute best. And that's heroic. We integrate ancient wisdom, modern science, practical tools. We're a social training platform to move you from theory to. To practice to mastery together. Very briefly, I want to Establish the fact that early research shows that using heroic works, we worked with a leading scholar in the field of positive psychology and flourishing, ran a pilot study with over 1000 participants. N equals 1053, in fact. And what we found was that, that if you use the heroic app for just a few minutes a day, in 30 days, you can move from the 60th percentile of flourishing. And again, scientists have ways to measure whether or not you're flourishing. We used an accepted measure, and our participants started in the 60th percentile, which is, of course, above average. And in 30 days, in just a few minutes on our app a day, they moved from the 60th percentile to the 83rd. Now, if you think about that in terms of being in a race, it's as if you started and you finished in 40th place, which is quite good, of course, out of 100 people, roughly. But then in 30 days, after training for a few minutes in our app, you went up 23 places in just a few minutes a day. That's something that we're very, very excited about. More concretely, if you use heroic and you embody the ideas we're going to talk about today, you. And if you're like the other heroes who were in our study and you hit just three targets on our app a day, and again, we'll talk more about what that means, you are likely to be 40% more energized, 20% more productive, and 15% more connected. Again, 40% more energized. Imagine your life if you were 40% more energized in the next year than you are today or in this year, in 30 days, 40% more energized, 20% more productive. What would you get done if you worked for five days and got one day free? That's what 20% more productive means. And if you were 15% more connected to yourself and your loved ones, that's what I'm fiercely committed to helping you experience. And that's enough about me and about heroic. Let's talk about you. Now, I want to step back again and ask you a few questions, and then we'll get to work. The first question is, do you know what the word hero literally means? We've got a picture of a guy with a tattoo. So I've got heroic as a tattoo. Check out this guy's tattoo. Heroes. Someone in our community. I got to get. This guy's name has the ancient Greek word heroes, our anglicized version of it, anyway, on his arm. What does the word heroes Mean? Well, in ancient Greece, when they were coming up for the word for hero, they didn't pick a word that meant tough guy or killer of bad guys. They went with a word that meant protector. A hero is a protector. A hero has strength for two. A hero's secret weapon is love. And a hero is willing to do the hard work to have that strength for two so they can make a difference in the world. As I say again and again and again, we are facing historically significant challenges as a society. We're not just recovering from the effects of, you know, Covid. We have pandemic levels of anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, political polarization, social injustice, et cetera. And the only possible way we're gonna meet these historically significant challenges is if you show up as the best, most heroic version of yourself. So quit looking outside of yourself. Look in the mirror. That's the hero we've been waiting for. Getting me fired up. All right, next question. Is this. Who's your favorite hero? Pause for a moment and think about that. Who's your favorite hero? Who comes to mind? Now, you want to know that reflecting on your favorite hero, or as the ancient Stoics would say, your ideal sage, that's an ancient practice, right? To imagine who you aspire to be, like, what qualities they have that you want more of, is a really powerful practice, and we're going to talk about that in our work together. But who comes to mind for you? I got some of my favorite heroes standing behind me on my wall all day, every day, looking at me. Guys like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, Marcus Aurelius, Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt are some of my favorite heroes. Who are yours? And next question. What do all of those heroes have in common? Now, each of those heroes are different, right? You got Gandhi, and you got Winston Churchill on my wall, literally. They're right next to each other. Those two are as different as you could possibly get. You got Gandhi, who's frail and would go days without talking. You've got Winston Churchill, who's portly and could rarely stop talking. And those two guys lived in the same era. They didn't even like themselves. Yet they both showed up as their idiosyncratic best. And they have one thing in common, I would say. What is it? What do you think? What comes to mind? Well, the way that I like to describe it is every single hero we admire has soul force. They've activated their soul force by living in integrity, with their deepest values and longer chat. But soul force comes from Gandhi. As you may Know he started the whole nonviolent resistance movement in India. Freed his nation without war. First time that ever happened. It was called nonviolent resistance, which was a very, very weak translation of the word he used and coined in Sanskrit, which was satyagraha. Satyagraha can be translated as truth force or virtue force or love force or soul force. And what he tried to bring out in his countrymen and women was their soul force. If you stand in soul force, you have this ineffable power that changes things. Martin Luther King talked about soul force in his I have a Dream speech. Soul force is where it's at. And that's what I want to help you activate. That's how we're going to help you activate your heroic potential and make this the greatest year of your life and fundamentally and permanently change your life. When we can help you flip the switch and help you show up as that best version of yourself, we will leverage and tap into your soul force. There you go. Next most important question of the day. This who are you at your absolute heroic best? Who are you at your absolute heroic best? Do you think about that very often? Because I want to encourage you to think about that every single day and then come back to that all day, every day. So we can move from theory to practice to mastery together, etc. That's my number one target for today. Alright now, I don't know about you, but I am fired up right now, ready to move on and get to work. But before we do, if you don't mind, one more quick question I want to ask you. Where are you in your life right now? How committed are you to showing up and being your best self? Because if we want to activate your heroic potential, we need to get to something called activation energy. There's a point at which one thing turns into something else, right? So if you want to turn water into steam and you want to go from simmering to boiling, do you know what temperature you need to hit? There's a precise temperature. It's called an activation energy point. It's 212 degrees. Nothing happens at 199 degrees or 200 degrees beyond a little simmering. But if you want to change the state from water to steam, you need to hit 212 degrees. 210 won't do it. 211 won't do it. You need to hit 212 degrees. It's the same thing with fire. If you want to ignite a fire and activate a fire, you need to get to 451 degrees, rubbing two sticks together. 300, 350, 400, 450, nothing. You need to get to 451 degrees. So my question for you is, where are you in terms of your commitment levels? Because if you're not committed, we're not going to be able to do anything great together. Now, I like to think of our kind of community of people we serve on what's known as a diffusion of adoption curve. It's a bell curve. I'll spare you the mathematical details, but you can line it up and say, look, half of the people show up on this half, the other half on this half. Then there's one standard deviation, so two standard deviations and three standard deviations out, right? And that covers the basically where everyone can fall. Now, if you are on the lower half of this distribution from our vantage point and you're not into self development, you wouldn't have made it this far into a video like this. You would have already thought, I'm crazy. This idea is stupid. You're essentially a cynic, right? What I'm talking about just doesn't resonate with you yet. You may get to a point where you hit rock bottom. You're like, you know what? I'm going to start looking for more solutions. But the cynic is often a disillusioned idealist and they're the ones making fun of people like us who are into this. And some of us fall into the cynic mode at times as well. Perfect. All good. No judgment. And we love you too. And when you're ready for us, we're here for you if you're in that state. The next phase, one standard deviation up is what we call a dabbler. So a dabbler is kind of sort of interested and they're gonna kinda sorta get involved. Perfect. We'll talk about how we can serve you. The next level up is the optimizer. I'm ready to go from dabbling to truly optimizing my life. We've got a way to serve you as well. Then the next level is. Check me out with my clicker. We've got the master. Now. The master is all in the. They want to truly achieve mastery and see what they can do. What are they capable of? How can we give ourselves in greatest service to the world? We have ways to serve you as well. Then the very asymptotic end of the bell curve, literally the 0.1% of us out there who are actual professional coaches, whether we're doing what I'm doing right now and coaching you in this context, or we're an actual heroic coach or optimal living coach or heroic performance coach, whatever you want to call it, mental toughness coach or even HR executive would fall into this. Well, we have a coach certification and empowerment program for that group as well. But anyway, think about where you're at. If you're a cynic, we're ready for you when and if you're ready to answer the call. And also another metaphor, we're heroic, Right? So we model everything we do on a hero's journey. If you haven't watched the documentary Finding Joe yet on Joseph Campbell and his wisdom on the hero's journey, check it out. You can watch it for free on YouTube. Google Finding Joe. Free YouTube and you'll find it. I happen to be in that movie with Deepak Chopra and Laird Hamilton and Tony Hawk and Sir Ken Robinson and Robin Sharma and some other great teachers. Everything we're doing is all about operationalizing that wisdom. Now, Joseph Campbell says the hero goes on a journey. And there are three basic parts to a hero's journey. As I see it. The first most important thing is you got to answer the call, right? So when you feel an inkling that you're capable of more, which all of us feel at the end of a year, as we get ready for the new year, I can do more next year. Or we feel and we kind of hit that rock bottom, or get a little bit overwhelmed and know we can do more with our lives. There's a call, a phone that's ringing that we need to answer. Answering the call is the first step in every hero's journey. Now, typically, the hero is reluctant. They don't want to answer the call. They're comfortable where they're at, even if they're kind of a little uncomfortable. It's easier to stay doing what you're currently doing than it is to go out and into the unknown. How does it feel when you leave your comfort zone? By definition, it feels uncomfortable. Very few people are willing to leave their comfort zone, no matter how unpleasant it may be. It's harder to go out and answer the call, but you got to answer the call. It's the first step. Then the hero gets a guide and they get buddies and they fight their dragons and they win or they learn, right? Lots of both. You win or you lose. Learn. Then you come back a better person and you bring your gifts back to the world. Anyway, we need you to answer the call now. If you answer the call at kind of the dabbler level. We think you might be interested in our free offering. You can get a bunch of stuff for free in the Heroic app. Watch our YouTube Philosopher's Notes TV episodes, the plus ones. Get a daily email from us. We, we've got a ton of stuff that you can check out as you kind of sort of dabble in the Heroic app. Now you might be dabbling in your life and not that serious and committed to mastery, or you might be dabbling with us and you might be really into the process of actualizing, but not that into us. Cool. We get it and we want to support you with wherever you're at now. Beyond that, we, we have a premium offering for the optimizers if you're ready to take the next steps. That's basically 20 bucks a month, $200 a year. You can get access to a ton of more wisdom and less time in our practical tools. I'll tell you more about that. And then beyond that, we've got a mastery program where I show up every single day to coach you. Literally every single day. We're really excited about this. And longer chat that. That's 50 bucks a month, 500 bucks a year. You. It also includes our Mastery series which is what has been scientifically shown to change lives at a very, very significant level. And it includes chats that I have with some of my favorite friends and kind of master teachers and leaders to figure out what they did to move from theory to practice to mastery. We talk to them about their masterpiece days, their AM and their PM bookends and, and their number one ideas in energy, work and love that have most changed their lives. It's super cool. And then we have the Coach Certification and Empowerment program which we're proud to offer for a thousand bucks. We've been told it's better than a lot of programs out there and it's a fraction of the cost. Again, longer chat, you figure out where you are in the process. And now we are going to get to work. It's time to activate your heroic potential while fundamentally and permanently changing your life. While making this year the greatest year of your life. Period. Here's how we're going to do it again. Theory, Practice, Mastery. Together today. Part one. Theory. We have seven objectives that are the cornerstone of everything that I and we will do together. These seven objectives show up in our 300 day mastery series and coach program that they show up in basic training in the app, which you get as an optimizer in the app. And they show up in my book, which is Coming out soon, which I can't wait to share. Thank you all for your support in advance. Those of you who have already said you want to buy a bunch of copies. So the seven objectives that we're going to walk through right now are. Number one, you got to know the ultimate game. We're going to look at ancient wisdom and modern science. What they say we need to think about. Society has seduced us to play the wrong game. You got to get the game right. This can change your life. Number two, you got to forge antifragile confidence. We're going to talk about the difference between being fragile, breaking when life challenges you, or resilient a little bit stronger, or antifragile, where you literally get stronger every time you get knocked around. That's our second objective. The third objective is to optimize what we call your big three. Your energy, your work, and your love. You get that right, you're at least 80, 85, 90% there. To creating a great life. The fourth objective is to make today a masterpiece. When should we move from theory to practice to mastery? Not someday. Today. The fifth objective is to master yourself. We're going to talk about the art and science of self mastery. We're going to talk about the three disciplines of self mastery. Structural, reactive and expansive. Discipline. Life changing stuff there as well. The sixth objective is dominate the fundamentals. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing your mind. These are the fundamentals you want to get right. You get these fundamentals right, you can fundamentally and permanently change your life while activating your heroic potential, making this the greatest year of your life. All of which leads us to the seventh objective, which is to activate your soul force. We have an equation for that. That's pretty fun.