Interview: Mind Hacking with Sir John Hargrave

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You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Sir John Hargrave who wrote Mind Hacking. He is an author, comedian and entrepreneur and author of this great book, Mind Hacking Subtitle how to change your mind for good in 21 days. One of our members recommended this book and I absolutely loved it. As I was telling John before our chat, it's, it's super. It's grounded in science and neuroscience and just solid wisdom and it applies it in a really fun, practical way. Especially if you're a geek and into kind of computer hacking and that sort of thing. I think you'll really love the metaphors and the practical wisdom. John, thanks for taking the time.

Thanks for having me, Brian.

So right before we jumped on, I asked you, let's start with your name, Sir John. Tell us about that.

Yeah, well, it's a funny story. I actually wrote the Queen of England several years back and I asked her, I said, you, Majesty, I would like to be knighted because I just thought Sir John Hargrave sounded so much classier. Don't you, Brian?

It's very classy.

So the Queen actually wrote me back. I got a letter from Buckingham palace and it said, well, to be knighted, you actually have to do something honorable. I was like, well, that's a lot of work. So I called my local county courthouse and I said, how do I get my name changed? And they said, we come down, you go before a judge, you pay a small fee and you can have your name legally changed. So I did that. I went before the judge and here I am, Sir John Hargrave before you today. It's kind of a name hack, if you will, but a lot easier than doing something noble and honorable.

I'll tell you as a British citizen. Noah, that is awesome. Well, that's fantastic. I was eager to hear your story on that. And as a comedian, my hunch was there was some story like that behind it.

The funny thing about it is, though, that once people start calling you Sir John Hargrave, you really do feel a responsibility to act more nobly and honorably. And I would say that it has significantly changed my life for the better, because I really do want to live up to the name now. It's on all my books. And, you know, I want to be sir worthy. Knight worthy, if you will.

Yeah, that's awesome. And we'll talk about that, too. Just in terms of how to hack our minds and to create the right sir circumstances to change things in subtle and significant ways. Let's start with the title of the book, Mind Hacking. Tell us why you named the book Mind Hacking.

Well, the premise is that your brain can be reprogrammed. Your brain can be reprogrammed. And if you're willing to accept that premise, then we show you how in this book. And a hack is really. We use it in the original sense of the word, like a clever technique to solve a problem, like the early computer hackers. Not malicious hacking, but. But genius hacking. And so mind hacking is about how can we find these techniques, these clever tricks to reprogram our own minds? And I like calling the book a user manual for the mind. It's like the lost user manual. And so mind hacking is all about how can we change our mind? Like we're reprogramming a computer.

I love it. And can you tell us the story that you started the book with about the challenges you were facing and kind of reaching a point where you're like, it's ready. Now's the time.

Yeah. So the book starts out with a great story which involves me being visited by the Secret Service. And I won't give away all the details, but suffice it to say, when the Secret Service shows up on your doorstep, something that's probably gone wrong in your life, Right? Like, that's not generally a good thing. So I realized, Brian, that my alcoholism and drug use was leading me to taking these crazy risks that culminated in the Secret Service showing up. And I made a decision that night, one of the worst nights of my life, that I was going to throw everything away. So I had all of these bottles of liquor. I said, I'm going to just go cold turkey, throw them in a dumpster. So I found myself behind the local supermarket throwing away bottle after bottle of expensive French wines and so forth. And I found that if my mind consciously focused on what I was doing, my mind would talk me out of it. Like, it would say, what are you doing, you idiot? Think of all the good times we've had with this liquor. You save it, give it to a friend. And I knew that all those were kind of ways out, but I found that if I just concentrated on the muscle movement of throwing away the bottles, like, literally one step at a time, and kind of put my mind on hold, then I was able to get through it. And that was my first mind hack, if you will, was just focusing on that, literally that one step at a time of throwing away the bottles into this dumpster and then getting sober and staying sober. Over the months and years that followed, I started cataloging those hacks of how could I reprogram my mind to live a sober and healthy lifestyle? And I've been sober for about nine years now, and it's been such an amazing journey that I wanted to share these hacks with other folks. Regardless of whether you're wrestling with addiction or you're trying to achieve goals, you're trying to lose weight, you're trying to find a partner, you're trying to start a business, mind hacking can be used for all those things.

Yeah, it's awesome. It's super funny story and super inspiring story. Just your arc and transparency in your challenges. And look, this is what I did and what I do to stay on top of my game. Which leads us to the next big idea I want to hear you describe, which is Jedi, like concentration. One of the first chapters is called Developing Jedi, like concentration. You have two facets to that that I thought was a perfect encapsulation of how to go about getting our minds right. Can you share that with us?

Yeah. So Jedi concentration training is really all about disciplining the mind. And there's kind of two. Two ways that you can think about your attention. There's kind of like a top down, and there's kind of a bottom up. And so the top down is like, let's train our minds to stay focused on a single task. And this is one of the great challenges of our digital age and of the current time that we live in, is people are increasingly unable to stay focused on a single task. And so we have specific techniques in the book, what we call Jedi concentration training, similar to meditation, that help you develop those powers of concentration. But the other piece is this bottom up, where we call it being distracted by bright, shiny objects. Right. So, like, I have a friend who we were driving down the road one day and suddenly he just. Hawk. He just screamed hawk. Like right in the middle of this thought that he saw a hawk. And that like just completely derailed his train of thought. So that's our little catchphrase in our family is whenever anyone just has that sort of bottom up, like, interruption of concentration, we scream hawk. So getting rid of those too is also part of this concentration. And again, the book has got a lot of really practical, fun exercises we call mind games to teach you to strengthen that top down as well as the bottom up concentration so you can actually get stuck stuff done.

Yeah, I love it. I'd love to hear if you could share some personal examples in terms of the reclaiming attention side of things. What are a few things that you do that you found really effective?

Well, I think that those of us who live digital lifestyles have a particular problem because there's so many things fighting for your attention at any moment. Right. And so one of these things is the one hour investment, one of the mind games in the book. And it's basically like take one hour to consciously remove as many of those daily distractions as you can from your digital workspace. Examples would be things like the little system updates that appear in the tray of your computer or the email list that you're on that you don't need to be on, or setting your text messages to vibrate instead of that annoying audible alert. All of those things, they're like attention stealers. What they do is they distract us from the purpose at hand. It's in the best interest of these device and software manufacturers to interrupt us. So we use their devices and their software. You've really got to reclaim that. You got to say, listen, I'm going to clean out all of this stuff so that I can actually focus and be productive and get my mind to where I want it to go. We basically say one hour to clean all those up is an investment that will pay off for many, many hours in the future.

That's great. I just wrote down systems upgrade messages. Turn that off. It's a subtle thing. I've done a lot of work to get off the iPhone and out of email and all that stuff, to systematically do it, but continuing to find those little marginal gains that make a significant difference when they're aggregated and then compounded. Right? Yeah. And then meditation, you call them mind games. As a key facet to retrain our concentration, you got a bunch of hilarious ways to approach it. The alien blasters. I hear what you call the other 1/3 nipple or something funny like that?

Yeah, yeah.

What's your favorite one?

Well, my basic meditation exercise, I think it's more important to do it than to worry about the technique. It's kind of like exercise. The most important thing is just to do it. But the way I recommend people who don't have a meditation practice is just make time to do it. 20 minutes in the morning is what I do. And I spend the first few minutes just relaxing every part of the body, starting with the head, going down to the toes, and then focusing on the breath. So focusing on the breath at the nostrils. And this to me is sort of the Meditation 101. If this is all you learn, focus on the breath. When you notice your mind wandering, bring it back and reward yourself with what we call awareness points. So we kind of gamify meditation. And the idea is that with normal meditation, people they find their mind wandering, which is normal. And then they get frustrated and they say, I can't keep my mind focused. Well, nobody can keep their mind focused. That's what you're practicing with meditation. But when you gamify it and you say, I get a reward every time I notice my mind wandering and I return it back to the breath, then you give yourself a little dopamine hit, right? It's like a little burst of pleasure for noticing that. And that is the point of meditation is noticing the mind wandering. So you do that for 20 minutes every morning. And you know, like exercise over time you will notice huge gains in your concentration, in your health, in your relationships. It really permeates every aspect of life.

Yeah, that's super cool. That's precisely what I do the 20 minutes. And again, I just love the way you frame it. You also have this funny line where you say you give yourself a pre mind game pep talk and you say, I'm going to quote you now mentally tell yourself what you're going to do. For example, for the next 20 minutes, I will focus on the breath and so that I may develop superhuman concentration and just make it fun, right?

Yeah, that's right. But it helps. Like it really helps to say, here's like really make a commitment to yourself and say, I'm going to do it. What is your technique, Brian? I'm curious. You said you spend 20 minutes in the morning.

It's very similar. And I actually taught a class called Meditation 101 where we talked about exactly that. And one of my number one things that I share when I teach it is just do it like it's way more important to show up and do, do it than it is to do it perfectly or to do the particular technique or whatever and don't miss a day. So that's my number one thing. I've missed one day in the last nine, eight, nine years or something like that now.

Amazing.

And I literally, it was after like three years and I went through like these stages of grief the morning after I realized I broke the streak. But, but anyway, that's my thing. And it's always first thing in the morning, right after I wake up and do the morning stuff. It's, it's sit 20 minutes and I sit in a basic posture. I take five deep breaths, inhaling to six, holding for two, exhaling for eight. Every single time, just five breaths. And then I'll vary it, you know, I'll do different things. Often it's, it's counting, you know, my breaths deeply, 1 to 10, 1 to 10, seeing how few I can get, making it a game that way. But for me it's, it's more of just an awesome opportunity to sit, be present, be grounded. Kind of feel that sense of spaciousness too, in time and prioritization while obviously just getting my mind just a little bit sharper, a little bit sharper, a little bit sharper and letting those little drops add up. And I can't imagine who I was before I started doing this. There's no question it's been extraordinary for me to develop that top down focusing ability.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think your whole point about the streaks is, is really important because I've taught a ton of people meditation as well. And the thing that I think most people get frustrated with is I'm not seeing any. I've been doing this for three days and I'm not seeing any results. It's still difficult for me. It does take time. Like exercise, it takes time. But once you start seeing the results, they're phenomenal.

Yeah. And as you say in the book, and as we all know at this stage, the research is unequivocal. I mean, it's literally the equivalent of going to the gym and working out your muscles. You're not going to change that in one workout or 50 push ups later, Right. It's the diligently, patiently, persistently showing up. So love it. Next idea, debugging your mind. Another great metaphor that you talk about. Tell us about that.

Well, basically we use the analogy of loops in programming. So if you've ever done any coding, a lot of what you do is looping through tasks and our minds are the same way that we have loops. And they can be positive loops or negative loops. And the negative loops, part of what we're doing in meditation is to become aware of those negative loops. And the negative loops are things like, you know, I'm not smart enough, or I can't do this, or I'll never find true love, or I can't lose this weight. Whatever those things are that we routinely tell ourselves, we tend to believe whatever our mind says. So whatever those negative loops that are going on in our head, we tend to just believe it without questioning. And one of the great freedoms you get with meditation as you develop this concentration training is you realize, like, you don't have to believe everything you think. You don't have to believe everything your mind tells you. And so then you start to say, well, listen, I can now see this. I have this perspective because I've been practicing this every day during meditation, practicing seeing my mind when it wanders. I now have this perspective of being able to step back and say this thing that I routinely think about myself, this negative loop. I don't have to think that anymore. I actually could reprogram that and turn it into something better. So we've got a ton of exercises or mind games that you can play to identify those negative loops that are holding you back and keeping you from your goals and your dreams. And then to reprogram those with the positive equivalent of those loops. We call it debugging the mind.

Yeah, I love it. Are you open to sharing one of your own little processes, kind of the negative or positive?

Yeah. So a good example is, you know, I used to think I was no good with people. So I would, you know, I'd be talking with somebody and I would feel really self conscious and awkward. You know, I'd be thinking internally like, you know, am I standing up straight or do I smell or is there a piece of kale in my teeth? And then I realized at one point that like, you know, this is a negative thought loop. I'm no good with people. And so I asked, what is the positive equivalent? Well, the positive equivalent is I'm good with people. You know, I'm comfortable talking with folks, I have great relationships, et cetera. So I just started repeating that whenever I noticed my mind going into that negative spiral as I was talking with somebody. And I did that, you know, thousands of times. And over time, it turns out that, guess what? I actually am kind of good with people now. So there's a kind of self fulfilling prophecy to all this, that when you Start to repeat those positive loops to yourself. They really do start to become true because they are your new reality. That's the magic of this.

That's awesome. And it kind of goes back to your Sir John. Right. There's a level of that self image you're living up to and into.

Yeah, yeah. I am slowly but surely becoming a knight or someone who is knight worthy.

Right on. So let's go to the next idea which is tied to that, which is the research you talk about regarding imagining your best self in 10 years. Can you talk to us about that?

Yeah. There's a lot of fun mind games in the book about figuring out what it is you want. And I think that's the problem that most of us have is, you know, if you ask the average person what is it that you want, they'll kind of look at you and say, you know, like a pony. You know, like, nobody's really that sure. Like, we all know what we don't want. That's very easy. We're always complaining about those things. But figuring out what it is that you want is the real challenge. And so these mind games in the book basically are about how can you, like, they help you visualize what is it that you want to be or become or do in your life. One of them is called the funeral speech. So the game is basically to imagine your funeral and on that day, what is it that you want people to say about you? The eulogy, virtues, if you will. Not what you've accomplished, but the kind of person that you want to be in your life. And by imagining that, you know, you can start to see, these are, these are the things that I want people to say about me when I'm gone. And that is a great way of figuring out the virtues that you want to embody in your life. And those in turn can be turned into those positive loops that you repeat to yourself and slowly reprogram your mind to obtain.

That's awesome. And I want to talk about virtues in our next idea with Ben Franklin and his moral perfection project. And then to go back to the 10 years just to underscore, because you talk about the research so nicely about Laura King and the work that she did of just imagining your best self in 10 years. Just doing that boosts your overall optimism and, well, being and mood. So taking the time to actually flex that muscle and get clear on, well, what do you want? What does your ideal look like in 10 years in and of itself, before you even do anything, actually boost everything you want to boost Right.

Yeah. That research is really great. And writing it down, too, is an important piece in the research. It was basically like journal for a few minutes each day on what your best self looks like. When people wrote down that vision of themselves, their best selves in 10 years, they were significantly happier, more optimistic, more positive, and, by the way, more prepared to actually become that person and live into that dream.

I'm going to quote you again. I love that. And you have this great line in the book. You say, I challenge you to spend the next five minutes picturing what you want your life to look like in 10 years. If you can't invest five minutes thinking about what you want to become, you have to seriously question your priorities. These five minutes could mean the difference between a life of confusion and sorrow and a life of happiness and fulfillment. What could be more important than that? So let's all remember to take the five minutes. Press pause right now if you can, and take it three to five minutes and just reflect on what you want your life to look like in 10 years. Super simple, super powerful, little hack. Let's go back to virtues and specifically Ben Franklin and his project. Can you tell us about that?

Ben Franklin, one of my heroes, had this, called it the moral perfection project. He writes about it in his autobiography. And basically, he made a list of 13 virtues that he wanted to embody, and he wrote them down in a little notebook with a little grid, and every day he would grade himself on these virtues. And basically he said, I was surprised to find myself much fuller of faults than I imagined, but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish. So basically, he would have virtues like cleanliness and industry and chastity and things like that. And I've made a list of my own virtues several years ago, and I review those every morning. I have them in a text file on my computer, and before I start my workday, I just look through those and just remind myself of them. Takes 30 seconds. Yet again. Just like being called Sir John Hargrave. Over the years, I've found while I am far from perfect and I'm much fuller of faults than I imagine, I have had the satisfaction of seeing myself slowly move in that direction and seeing those virtues become part of my life. And so going back to envisioning your best self, figuring out what those virtues are that you want your life to embody, and then reminding yourself and making a system that reminds you of them on a daily basis, I think one of the most important things you can do in life.

Yeah, I completely agree. And I love the phrase you used of the eulogy virtues. And I'm actually looking at. I put mine on an index card. So I've got six virtues that I aspire to embody for. From, like, a creative and professional perspective. Yeah, I flipped aside, which, frankly, I need to flip more often because I keep the work side up more often, you know, then the other side is the family. What are the virtues I want to embody that I hope you know my family is proud to say I embodied at the end of my life in that eulogy scenario? And it's unbelievably powerful just to have those on my desk all the time. Check them out throughout the day. 10 seconds. Right. It's not a big deal, but those little reminders are truly significant.

There's a great book that I just read recently called the Road to Character by David Brooks.

I was just going to mention that because he's the one who introduced me to the idea of eulogy virtues.

Yeah, that's where I got that from, too. So he talks about there's the resume virtues versus the eulogy virtues. And the idea is resume virtues are all the things you've accomplished success in typical terms. But eulogy virtues are the things people are going to say about you after you die. And they're kind of two different things. And they really, what we want to try to do is live lives that accomplish both. But those eulogy virtues, he makes character studies of all these famous leaders throughout history and says, here's how they developed some of those. And what I appreciated about his book was there he really gives you an idea that it's messy, like life is messy, and nobody is perfect and nobody embodies those with perfection. And yet we still can strive for those things and make significant progress toward them. And that's so much of what mind hacking is about. It really is about improvement in the direction of those virtues.

That's awesome. It reminds me of Stephen Covey's primary Greatness as well, where, you know, it's primary greatness, focus on these virtues and let the secondary greatness, which most of society is all about, the resume virtues, come as a byproduct of your commitment to these virtues and something bigger than yourself and such a powerful frame. I love the Road to Character. Highly recommend that for anyone interested in diving deeper in that realm. For now, let's come back to another. One of my favorite mind hacks and kind of stories you shared was on Pete Carroll and him working with his partner, Dr. Michael Gervais, the sports psychologist And I just love that line you shared of what do you say we build a masterpiece together? Can you tell us a little bit about what they did and how they integrated mind hacking?

Yeah, I heard Michael Gervais, the sports psychologist who was behind the Seattle Seahawks and their amazing super bowl victory, and it was so inspiring. And he talks about how he works with players in high stress situations and it really gives you this appreciation for professional football, how the physical danger that they're in as well as the constant emotional danger, the thought that you're going to miss one play and you're going to be eviscerated by the press and that people have made huge monetary bets on the outcome of the game and all of these things are riding on your performance at any given moment. And he says when he works with players and how he really coached the Seahawks team was encouraging this mind hacking approach of let's figure out what it looks like when you're at your best. So in other words, he gets those players into the zone, into the mental zone, when they have been in the flow, when they've been most at their peak performance. And then he says, how are we going to get you there in those moments of extreme stress? What are the tools or techniques that you're going to use, the hacks, we might say, to get yourself back into that zone when you are under extreme stress. And that's what they do together. Obviously it worked, but meditation was a huge part of that. And just the mental game of understanding how you personally can get there. I think all of us, for example, I run this content marketing business, Media Shower. I would be in a high stakes situation, speaking in front of a big audience or with an important customer, whatever that might be. There are moments when we all have stress, when we all have those situations and we've got to learn how to get ourselves into that, that, that zone of peak performance. That's, that's what mind hacking is all about.

I love it. And then, you know, what gets in the way? So seeing yourself at the best and then what gets in the way? What is your kryptonite? What are the thoughts, what are the behaviors you engage in that gets in the way of you actually consistently showing up at that, that peak spot and then hack your way through that, right? Get creative and figure out a way more consistently move, move around that and through it, et cetera. What did we not talk about? Is there like a favorite idea that we didn't talk about that you want to share?

Well, I love talking about the reality distortion field. That comes from Steve Jobs, who his coworkers explained, they described Jobs as having this reality distortion field. And there's this story about one of the new programmers on the original Macintosh. A new guy came into the team and one of the veteran programmers pulls him aside just before a meeting with Jobs and he says, I just want to warn you before you go into this room, Jobs is going to want this shipped in 10 weeks. And the new programmer says, that's impossible. We can't do it. And the veteran says, I understand that, but you're going to have to understand that Steve Jobs has a reality distortion field. And so the new programmer goes in there and he comes out an hour later totally convinced that he can do it. And the idea was that Jobs had this belief that things were possible that was so strong that he could actually influence the minds of others. And I believe that all of us have within us that reality distortion field. We have the power to do that. And it comes from this, this. This conviction that we absolutely can and will get something done, that we will make this reality a reality. And when we believe in that strongly enough ourselves, we actually have the power to influence the minds of others. With most of us, it's a very weak gravitational pull. But with concentration, with practice, we can learn to build up that reality distortion field and use it to make great changes in the world.

I love it. One little mind hack at a time. This is great. I love to. I'm going to share your URL in a moment and people can connect with you more deeply. But I'd like to wrap up these interviews by asking one final question, which is if you, from what you've learned and integrated and all that good stuff, had to share just one piece of wisdom for an individual passionate about optimizing their life, what would that one piece of wisdom be?

I think that your brain can be reprogrammed. Your brain can be reprogrammed, so you do not have to accept the way that your mind thinks. Today, you are the master of your mind. You control it, you own it. And so therefore, you can get down deep into the source code and you can reprogram it to think anything that you want, literally anything you want. That's how you unleash your potential as a magnificent human being.

Love it. Thank you, Sir John. Where can people go to learn more about you and mindhacking?

Well, you can buy the book on Amazon or at Find booksellers everywhere and you can also visit www.mindhecky.ng. so that's mindhacking with a NG and subscribe to our email list where you actually get a full 21 day program of guided exercises so you can learn meditation and actually have guided exercises that walk you through all the mind games we've been talking about.

Brian, Absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for your work and for taking the time.

Thanks Brian.

Isn't it a bit odd.

We went from Math to Science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do is something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101 meditation 101, that sort of thing.

You've got a personal trainer?

I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient Wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at Brian Johnson Me Join.