Brian Johnson presents a short micro-class podcast on "How to Play the Equanimity Game." He defines equanimity (Latin roots aequus + animus = balanced mind), quotes Marcus Aurelius (advising rapid recovery of self-control when circumstance upsets equanimity), and lays out a simple, repeatable practice: treat it as a game, notice when you're off, see how quickly you can recover, smile, take deep breaths, and ask "What would the highest version of myself do?" Emphasis is on habituating the practice so recovery becomes faster and more consistent.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry. Bright and early morning, just meditated and jumping straight into this. One of my favorite ideas. It's called how to play the Equanimity Game. A little shadow going on here. All right, how to play the equanimity game. So first let's start by defining our terms. One of my favorite words, equanimity, a beautiful word, equanimity. The word comes from two little Latin words, aequis and animus, which basically means equal or balanced mind. So equanimity aequus, animus means a balanced mind. That is technical description. Pretty hot. So equanimity, one of my favorite words, One of my favorite ideals and virtues, having a balanced mind. Now that's part one, defining our terms. Part two. A quote. There's a quote from Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorite philosophers. He was the Roman emperor and philosopher. You might know him from his cameo in the movie the Gladiator. He was that cool old dude. This is from his book Meditations, which is a fantastic book, which actually means Meditations is kind of a mistranslation of notes to himself. So Marcus Aurelius, much like in that movie the Gladiator when he was in the kind of Danube region of what's now Germany dealing with those barbarians, he, he was writing notes to himself, meditations. And this is one of those notes he wrote to himself. He said, when force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time recovering your self control and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it. Just love that. When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time recovering your self control and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it. So much goodness there. So first let's notice he starts by saying when force of circumstances upsets recognity. He doesn't say if. Right. Big, big difference there. When you get thrown off balance, not if we're all going to get thrown off balance at different times throughout the rest of our lives. Hopefully, hopefully we're stretching or continuing to grow. We're pushing our edges and we're not going after some silly ideal of never having an off moment again. Dan Millman says something great. He says there are no enlightened beings. There are only more or less enlightened moments. When we embrace that fact, we know that force of circumstance will upset our equanimity. The question is, what do we do when that happens? And I like to play the equanimity game. So I've kind of made this a game. When I'm sitting here and I'm feeling pretty groovy, you know, I got a little happy face, everything's good, and boom, I get knocked off. Sad face, right? I get knocked off this way, sad face. The game becomes the equanimity game. How quickly can I get back to this state of equilibrium, this state of equanimity where I have a balanced mind, right? So I'm off. How do I get back on? I'm off. How do I get back on? Really, really cool way that I found to approach it. So here's our game plan. Number one, we got to make the whole thing a game. Gonna make life a game. As my whiteboard says, it's all a game. So it's all a game. This is all supposed to be fun as we optimize our lives. And when we find ourselves off balance, first thing we gotta do is, okay, we made it a game. Second thing we do is we notice when we're off. So we gotta be able to notice it. Having awareness of when we're off is in fact the most important part of the whole process. Because if you're totally numbing yourself and you're not even aware of when you're off, and you're going from one distraction to another, whether that's TV or Facebook or the news or whatever it is constantly numbing yourself. You're not noticing when you're off in general. And specifically in a moment, you just kind of run through, you have a stimulus and response. Well, we've got to notice when we're off. Wow, I'm really feeling off right now. I'm about ready to yell or I did just yell or whatever it is. So notice when you're off. And then most important part, see how fast you can get back on. When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time recovering your self control. Okay, cool. How fast can we get back on? I got thrown off. How fast can I get back on? So then we go to. Okay, it's game time. How do we get back on? Well, we recognize it's game time. Our highest goal. You remember that one? Going back, we had our purpose, Remember our purpose, Our highest goal was to be that light bulb that was plugged in, right? Well, okay, our Highest goal. It's game time. I'm knocked off. I'm not being my highest self. Let me get back on.
What do I do next?
Well, I recommend you smile. You take a really deep breath. Breath. And breathing is such an amazingly powerful tool. We're going to talk about it a lot throughout these little videos. It's one of the quickest ways to build your willpower is to take a deep breath. Then we get out of Fight or Flight and we get into the relaxation response. And it's only from this place of deeper relaxation where we're not freaking out, that we can actually do something that's more consistent with our highest version of ourselves. And then I move into the third part, which is, let's ask ourselves a couple of questions. I like, what would the highest version of myself do right now? So it's kind of like the high school again. What would the highest version of myself do in this moment? I'm feeling off, but what would that version of me do? Another question is, if I knew what it was, what would my optimal response be? So you're stressed out, you're challenged. Force of circumstance has forced you to lose your self control. What would your idea, what would your optimal response be in this moment? Feel into that. Take another deep breath or two and then do that. Do these actions that your highest version of yourself tells you is what you should be doing. Again, not complicated. You do that. Voila. You are back in balance. You move from the eeksauce to the happy face and you've recovered your equanimity, your balance of mind. Really important thing to know here too is when you make this a habitual practice, your ability to get back to this balance point, you're never going to get to the point where you're never thrown off. All right? I don't think, but we're going to be able to get to our balance point, our state of equanimity more and more quickly and more and more consistently. So there you go, the equanimity game. Why? I think you want to think about playing it and how to go about playing it. Let's go ahead and rock it. Equanimity, balance of mind, make it all a game. Notice when you're off, see how fast you can get back on. Smile, take a deep breath, ask yourself, what would the highest version of myself do right now? And if I knew what it was, what would my optimal response be?
Do that.
Voila. You've hit your highest goal. You're living with purpose. You're feeling the equanimity. And that feels good. And everyone around you feels considerably better than when you have an imbalanced, unequal, mean mind. So hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more. We're going to talk about all kinds of ways to maintain our equanimity beyond just these few ideas and I cannot wait to share more. Have another awesome day. See ya.
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