Brian Johnson recounts a high-impact coaching session with Phil (they've had ~451 one-on-ones) and summarizes Phil’s framework of the "three unavoidables of life": pain, uncertainty, and constant work. He explains that Phil’s forthcoming workbook (to accompany Lessons for Living) will help people accept and learn to love these unavoidables as the route to heroic potential. Johnson references the Netflix documentary Stutz (and a Ronaldo Instagram screen grab) as related cultural touchpoints, contrasts a previous mantra (PUH, pronounced "poo") with a new acronym PUCW (pronounced "puke"), and leads listeners through the new mantra as a call-to-action to embrace discomfort with a smile.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. The other day Phil and I had one of our all time best coaching sessions. Now Phil and I have had around 451 one on one coaching sessions so far, yet somehow we continue to find new frontiers to explore. I took a dozen pages of notes and could barely keep up with the wisdom bombs Yoda was dropping as he walked me through and how he was planning to approach his upcoming workbook that will go with his latest book, Lessons for Living. As currently conceived, the workbook will essentially help us work through what Phil calls the three unavoidables of life. Pain, uncertainty and constant work. Note When I gave a little talk to Toronto FC before their home opener a few weeks ago, I dropped in a little screen grab the great soccer player Ronaldo Instagrammed capturing the same wisdom from the Netflix documentary Phil is in with Jonah Hill called Stutz. Have you watched that yet? It's fantastic. So in our coaching session, Phil went off on how to deal with the three unavoidables of life. Pain, uncertainty and constant work. I literally couldn't keep up and I plan to share some highlights and future plus ones for today I want to focus on a new acronym. As you May recall, in +1 number way back when we talked about the same basic idea, only I described the three unavoidables as pain, uncertainty and hard work rather than pain, uncertainty and constant work. As we discussed, Phil tells us that we need to learn to not only accept these three unavoidables, but learn to love them, remembering that embracing life's inevitable pain, uncertainty and constant work is the key to activating our heroic potential. When we quit unsuccessfully trying to avoid all that pain, uncertainty and hard work, and instead approach it with a bring it on mentality, everything changes. So in that previous one, I shared a new mantra to capture our commitment to to embracing pain, uncertainty and hard work so we can utilize it as fuel for our heroic throat. As you may recall, that mantra was I love poo P u H pronounced poo. Of course. Today we're going to create a new mantra to capture our commitment to loving pain, uncertainty, and not hard work, but constant work. Here it is. I love puke, which happens to be the pronunciation of the acronym P U C W P U C W Puke. Yes, there's a long U, a hard C and a silent W. And that's today's plus one. We love poo and we love puke. Why? Because we know that our infinite potential exists just outside our comfort zone. And we know that that the pain of that discomfort often makes us feel a little nauseous. Perfect. Bring it on. Say it with me now with a smile. We love pain, uncertainty and hard work. We love pain, uncertainty and constant work. We love poo. We love puke. It's day one. We're all in. It's time to step out of our comfort zones and give the world all we've got with a smile today.
