Brian Johnson reflects on a rough soccer game and connects it to his son's chess performance, exploring how nutrition and daily habits affect mental sharpness and competitive play.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. I'm typing this on a Sunday morning. I started my day the same way I start every day. Well, technically my day started the night before. And last night the kids and I watched Toronto FC play Charlotte FC on Apple TV until the game was over at 8:35pm CT. Pushing our normal bedtime back a bit. Unfortunately, our favorite MLS team, Toronto fc, coached by my dear friend John Herdman, lost a close one. Good news. They won their home opener against the same team five weeks before and I had the chance to celebrate that one with John and the team in Toronto in fact. And I was laughing with joy as I typed this out. John and I celebrating on the field together was captured on the Jumbotron at the Bemo Field. Check that out. Linked in the plus one. Super fun. Now, other than that relatively late night soccer viewing party, the day evening was dominated. I woke up feeling great. Aura tells me I'm a 92 readiness with a 94 sleep score. Perfect. So it's time to dominate my AM protocol. I meditate like an enlightened monk. My new heroic target description. Do my quick opening series of stretches capped off with a sun salutation and my first set of burpees. Then I do a little the confident mind inspired hero bars, affirmations, visualization, journaling. Then I get to work on a new philosopher's note on Deion Sanders new book Elevate and Dominate. Then Emerson came into my office to sync his Oura ring him. Man, that game was good last night. It was so close. Me. I know, right? Then him and geez, I can't believe I lost to an 1100 yesterday. Eating poorly made me play 500 points lower than my rating context on that one. Than the wisdom. Emerson had a chess tournament yesterday. It was a quick one day event and it was probably his worst performance ever. Eat now. More context than the practical Wisdom One of the very interesting things we've noticed is that the day after we go to Whole Foods and the kids get some treats that are a little off the normal men. You're nothing crazy, but a little different than we usually get. His performance on the website chesstempo.com goes down the following day. It's actually fascinating to see Chess Tempo, the site he uses to do his chess puzzles we've been talking about, gives him a green bar or a red bar depending on whether or not his rating goes up or down for that day's work. And get this. Every single time, and I mean literally every single time, Emerson goes to Whole Foods and has a little off the menu snack. His performance the following day is red, otherwise it's almost always green. It's really goosebumps. Fascinating to see the quantifiable performance data so starkly visually represented with those green and red bars and so perfectly correlated with his nutrition habits. And guess what the kids ate Friday the day before the tournament off the menu stuff from Whole Foods. Oops. But know this, I'm typing this with a very big smile because I love love love the fact that my little 11 year old boy can make the connection between what works for him and what doesn't. Today's plus one. How about you? Imagine you performing at your best. Awesome. Nice work. Now imagine having an off day. You can't quite turn your brain over and dominate the way you like to. Now think about one thing you might be doing that's influencing those suboptimal performances. You got it? Make the connection and change your behaviors today.
