Micro Class: Greatness + Homeostasis + Adaptability

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on homeostasis plus adaptability. It's inspired by peak secrets from the new science of expertise, Anders Ericsson. We've talked about the gift, we've talked about practice so far in this little micro class series. Now we're going to talk about one of the key aspects of practice that I mentioned was leaving your comfort zone. So here's your comfort zone. Boop. That's you living inside your comfort zone. Now, what's interesting is we want to use something called homeostasis to our advantage. So you basically, in every individual, live at a basic homeostatic point where everything's mellow and your body is constantly working to keep you at a homeostatic point. Right. Homeostasis is extraordinarily important. Every single cell in your body is regulating itself to achieve homeostasis. Right? Your blood sugar, your blood pressure, your pulse rate, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, that's great. And it's important for stability, right? There's your stability. You're nice and strong. Strong foundation, et cetera. Right? And we want to use that to our advantage. And what happens is, if you go outside of your comfort zone, whether that's deciding to run three miles three times a week, if you've never run before. Right. Or meditating for 20 minutes a day and bringing your attention back to an anchor point, right. That's outside of your comfort zone, you're not used to doing that. Now, what's amazing is, because our bodies are so committed to homeostasis, what happens when we do this and we challenge ourselves by pushing ourselves outside of our current limit? And again, I'm not talking about up. That's the snap zone, not the stretch zone. We want to just go outside of our comfort zone a little bit. Right? When we do that and we go for that run, our body inside has a little voice going on that says, hey, wait. Okay, you want me to do this? You want me to be able to run? You want me to be able to lift this weight? Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make ourselves a little bit stronger. I'm going to overcompensate is the technical word for it. And what happens then is our comfort zone gets extended. Okay, you want me to do that more consistently? Well, let's set a new baseline. Let's set a new homeostasis. That's how you use adaptability to harness the Power of homeostasis. Then what happens? Well, then you exit your comfort zone again and your comfort zone catches up. And you do it again. And you do it again, and you do it again. George Mumford in the Mindful Athlete called this romancing your discomfort zone. When we apply it to homeostasis, we see the science of why you need to exit your comfort zone. And Anders Ericsson makes the incredibly direct point. If you never leave your comfort zone, you will never improve, period. Improvement occurs on the other side of your comfort zone again. We've heard that a ton of times. It's really cool to see the science of it and why homeostasis and adaptability work together. Now, when we do this with our bodies, it's very obvious, right? We see our muscles grow, et cetera. But it's happening in our minds as well. Most people call it. When we adapt in our minds, they call it neuroplasticity. Our brains are plastic, right? Our brains can grow and evolve in a similar fashion as our muscles. Obviously very different actual mechanics, but we can adapt. And he talks about a bunch of research. London taxi drivers, for example, have a hippocampus region that's significantly larger than non taxi drivers. Cause they have to manage all of this visual spatial information. That's truly crazy. And their brains changed just as if they were working out their biceps, right? Point being, get out of your comfort zone. Trigger adaptability by working with the general principles of stable systems homeostasis. That was fun. I hope you enjoyed. Here's to healthfully exiting our comfort zone. And again, remember, it's just a little bit. You don't need to go nuts and injure yourself or burn yourself out. But what you do need to do is consistently step outside, step outside, step outside. And let the compounding benefit of that occur over an extended period of time. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me. Two basic things. One, our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And two, our Optimal Living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. Ten bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there, philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas for from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my optimal living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish, and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.