How to pursue Work goals and Family goals at the Same Time? - with Brian Johnson on Optimize Coach

The content you're about to hear was captured during a live coaching session in the Optimize Coach program multiple times every month. Coaches Connect Live with Brian, Michael, Alexandra and members of our world class luminary guest faculty for wisdom, guidance and encouragement. For more head to Optimize Me coach.

I joined Coach 3 just a few months after becoming a mom during a global pandemic. And I think what I've struggled with most is so I know I signed up for this during one of the hardest seasons of life. I also am a business owner, so I'm a coach. I help women struggling with anxiety and depression reclaim their life through a lens of lifestyle design and neuroscience. So, like, Optimize is totally right up my alley. I've been following Brian for years and years and years. Just lifestyle design, I think, is everything. And it was a faulty lifestyle design that caused my mental health struggles, you know, years ago. And so where I am, and I think a lot of these conversations have been perfect, is just this idea of can I have two targets and what does that look like? Because being a mom, actually there are two main questions of one, can I have two targets? Right? Being a mom, being a present mom is important. And the work that I do is so special. And it is how I help women rise. I help women reclaim their lives in amazing, miraculous ways that have been seeking help for years and years and years and can't find it in like the mainstream medical world. So that's one is like I constantly feel like I'm kind of being tugged between the two. And then the second question is this lifestyle design. And it feels like I'm constantly. So the way that I've done my optimized training over the last, like 250 days, I think we've been in three is I kind of binge and then I step away and life just gets super busy. And then I come back and I binge and then I step away and I get back super busy because there's so much that I feel like I don't actually control right now with my son sleeping through the night. And I just found out actually a few days ago I'm pregnant again, which is incredible and exciting. And I'm about to enter this season where I know the next few months my energy levels are going to be so low again. And I just, right, I'm a chronic doer and so I'm always wanting to do more in every area of my life. And where I think I have done well is in these last three months, I've hired Four people to my staff to help take some of my workload off. I finally, like, owned that childcare might need to be part of this. And this also might be a question to bring to Alexandra too, just as the mom of my work. And being a mother is so important and valuable to me, and I don't know that I can say I have one target over the other.

So this is so good. Well, so good to see you, appreciate you and your energy. And congratulations. I saw a bunch of people blowing you up. That is just awesome. So much goodness there. So, two principal questions. The first was, can I have two targets? And I would say, no, I think you need to have three. So energy, work, and love. It's not either or. Like the whole false dichotomy between. Well, there's a bunch of ways you can frame it, but you don't need to choose. You can't choose. I don't think a good life allows us to choose. But this is, I think, again, what society is kind of forcing us to do. And it overwhelmingly rewards the work. So John committed to his own spiritual eudaimonic development, however you want to frame it, and his family and whatever he committed himself to his own mastery, educationally, etc. And, you know, our society, again, is going to reward what it's going to reward, but we live in a profoundly sick society when it is no measure of well being to be well adjusted to that society. But I would suggest that let's get three targets, if you will, and keep them eudaimonic, which is we're talking to metalab in a half an hour. The cornerstone of one of the cornerstones of the app is going to be helping us operationalize. Obviously know the game we're playing, play it well, forge antifragile confidence, but then the big three protocol. So from my perspective, it's energy, work, and love, in that order. Because, again, you have so many challenges with your young boy now and another one coming that we need to actually get even more clarity on. Okay, shoot all the stuff I used to do before I had a baby out the door. I've got to reinvent myself now. But what is my current energy protocol going to look like while balancing the other two things? And so I have the energy for both my work and my love. And this is such a wonderfully creative challenge. And again, this is a reverse indicator that you're doing something right, that you care, you have deep, deep meaning in your life, and you've got a complex puzzle to solve. Perfect, let's solve it let's get the energy where we can get it, knowing that we have constraints. And, boy, you're now going to need to work within even tighter constraints, which, when I became a new father, I became way more productive because I stopped doing stupid things. And I don't know if you can see my board right now, but it says first things first, second things, not at all. I have to be more ruthless now than I've ever been. And there's a level of I just listening to some stuff by a Navy SEAL I just got introduced to who wrote a great book. He said the L in SEAL is for lazy. Lazy. Now, seals aren't normally known as lazy people, but they don't want them to have to work crazy hard. They want them to find the most efficient way to hit the target they set for themselves. So what we need to do is, you have constraints, let's use those to our advantage. You've only got so much time to work. Now, that's actually a really cool thing because it forces you to do what you're doing, which is, what is it that I and only I can do? And I got to get my staff in your situation. You got to get your staff set up so they do the things that only they can do. And then paradoxically, when you actually do that hard work, you can get more done in an hour a day than you could have in 10 hours a day when you were just spraying your energy everywhere. Now, again, that takes a fair amount of wisdom and self mastery and courage and love in order to do that. Obviously, the hope and the gratitude and the curiosity and the zest help as well. But anyway, three targets. Energy, work and love wise. What are your identities? What are your virtues? And then now what's the most important thing? And the app to kind of frame it is going to help us do all the obvious things we do in the program. But then it's going to be. It's literally, I have my aura score. I don't know if you can see that, but I've got this little thing that Michael did which is super rough, but it's got the big three across the top energy working up my identities, and it's got the virtues and it's got my number one habits. This is Michael's awesome but very basic sketch of it that the Metalab team is working on. While my aura score is loading, I literally go hold down on athlete. I recommit. Yep, I'm an athlete or radiant exemplar, whatever it is. For today, I'm the CEO or chief executive philosopher. Boom. That's the identity I'm going to be in today. I'm a soulmate. Yeah. And then the virtues. Boom, boom, boom. Then I commit number one most important thing, energy, work and love wise. And you've heard me say that good luck having a bad day if that's all you did was start your day reminding yourself of the ultimate game and how to play it well. And then the thing that was most important, energy, work and love wise. Then we get out of the binge off cycle and we're able to find a simple, humble 15 second, 30 second minute commitment to the things that if we agree the big three is a good guidepost, we can kind of consistently chip away at that. And then throughout the day, without going into any more details, once you commit to this target energy wise and you hit it, it's going to be a really cool dopamine releasing. Celebrate that BJ Fog, Teresa Amabile style. Boom. You did it. Then the next thing that you said was most important energy wise will pop up. Work wise will pop up. But it's not time management, it's virtue. And then big three energy, work and love management that I think will help us navigate this. So again, going back to your primary question, not 2, 3. And then the challenging opportunity, wonderful opportunity you have now is okay, given your constraints of reality. What do you want? Do your target practice energy wise. I want this perfect. What do you need to do and what's your day going to look like to get that? Work wise. What do you want? And you're in a season. You use the word a season of your life and you're different than Alexander because she wasn't so much an entrepreneur. She worked as little as she could in order to pay her bills so she can spend all of her time doing other things, you know, so she's got a different makeup and idiosyncratic expression than you do. Your entrepreneurialism is more important. Perfect work within your constraints. What do you want? And then what do you want? Love wise. And again, experiment. Walk on that tightrope. Oh, I'm a little too far this way, I'm a little bit too far that way. That's exactly where you should be navigating something complex. But I think that orientation might be really empowering, you know, to figure out what it looks like. And then as always, the playful good luck with that because it's about ready to get even more complex in a few months. But tell us your thoughts.

No, I think all that's really helpful and I think the key for me is in this season of my life, I also spent a decade as a competitive athlete. I've been a certified personal trainer for a decade. I ran track at a collegiate level. And so my energetic bed, like, I actually, in this season of my life, feel great on like 20, 30 minute workout, three or four days a week. Like, that works for me. And then I just move with my son. Luckily, he's only 14, 15 months, but he'll like walk a mile with me. And so I think that that is a huge thing. I also just need to just own this season of my life and that I'll never be in that season of my life again. And that's wonderful. And so I think that all just kind of helps me recalibrate to the. What are the constraints of my reality and letting go of this kind of control of. I don't actually know what a lot of those constraints will be until they show up. Right. Every pregnancy is going to be different, every kid's going to be different. And so I think as somebody who tends towards wanting to know it all, do it all, control it all, um, a lot of it is really just going to be teaching myself to, to roll with the punches, to adjust accordingly. And if all I do is the single 15 second most important thing in each one of those areas, like, I have won for that day.

So full stop. And then you win all day, every day. And then you, then you bring your intensity and that playfulness, and you simultaneously with all of that, hold really high standards. So you are also like, well, I'm going for it. I'm going to bring that same energy that made me a collegiate athlete and that has done this and done that, but there's again, that paradoxical lightness and fierceness to it. Oh, I see. Okay, cool. Thank you, stoic gods. Whatever your frame is, this is awesome. Given these constraints, how do I create that ideal? And the most important thing is what you said, which is the season of life and the control, the controllables and anticipate the unknowables and have that dynamic flexibility where, again, we have enough structure that we're not overflowing and flooding the spontaneous side into chaos. Right. But we don't have so much that we're rigid, and it's just that beautiful opportunity to practice your philosophy and then show the women that you coach what it looks like to be an exemplar. Having dealt with your own challenges and now dealing with more complexity than ever, you practice your philosophy and the harder it is the more committed you are.

Yeah. And I think another thing that stands out so much to me is what do I want? Not what do I think I should want. What has society told me that I want? What, I grew up religious. Like, what does the church say that I want? You know, whatever. It's. No, maybe what I want is two or three full work days, and maybe that means childcare and that's okay. Or what? Like, do I want a half day or whatever? And so I think that that's the other thing too. I need to just spend some quiet time by myself and say, what do I want? And how do I make that happen and just, like, tune out all of the shoulds from. From others.

I wish I could reach through and give you a hug. Yes. This is what Emerson literally barks at me every day. All he says to me every day, they all talk to me. Right in the meditation. Trust thyself. That's all he ever says. Trust thyself. Trust thyself. Trust thyself. Which is expressed in the question, what do I want? And again, not in a narcissistic, no one else matters, but no, truly, what do I want? Because, of course, from our stage of development, that must include being present and being loving, especially when we're doing the big three, being good soulmates. But that has to start with our own soul and our own Yudaimon. And from that place, we can do it. We're really called to do. And again, Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss. The what do I want? Is the way to ask that question, right? And when you don't feel that, like, Phil coaches me often on rage and how rage is actually a really important emotion because it points to that which you don't have that you want now. You need to be able to approach that properly. But it also points to your bliss, because if something is enraging you, whether it's things going on in society or things in your own life or whatever, there's an opportunity there to dig a little deeper and find what you want. So again, when you find that bliss is gone, get it back in. One way to get it back very quickly is, well, what do I truly want? It's targeted thinking. I mean, then it's victim to creator, to hero. What do I want now, what I need to do? What do I want now, do I need to do? And then setting up the macro systems, which again, we believe, and we're betting on the big three, is really helpful for that. We don't need to go like this, and we can tighten it up a little bit. You know what I mean? There'll still be variance and dynamicism. But look, we know the broad game we're playing. We recommit to that consistently. And then we constantly use every opportunity that used to throw us off as an opportunity to practice the philosophy. Then you give your gifts to your family, to your kids, to your community, to your team. It's a beautiful demonstration of everything we're talking about.

We hope you enjoyed that. Part of a live coaching session from the Optymyze Coach program. For more info, head to Optimize Me Coach.