Micro Class: Left Hook

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on left hook. It's inspired by Ronda Rousey and her great book, My Fight. You fight Ronda Rousey, for those of you who do not know, is a mixed martial artist. She is an Olympic medal winning judo competitor and ESPN recently voted her the best fighter in the world, which is pretty amazing for a number of reasons. I like to think that if Bruce Lee was alive today and he was a woman, he'd be Ronda Rousey. Great book, inspiring story. If you're into martial arts, I think you'll enjoy it.

So here's the idea here. This is Rhonda, looks just like her, right?

And she is in a fight and she breaks her right hand.

Didn't even know it during the fight.

But afterwards she said, oh my gosh, I broke my right hand. Now how did she respond to that? She responded to that the same way she responds to all the challenges she's faced in her career, which is, how do I make this make me better? She immediately said, look, I'm gonna make my left hook amazing. Can't use my right hand for X weeks. Not a problem. I'm gonna have a great left hook at the end of this. It's one of the best examples of turning poison, poison into medicine.

Buddhist concept, right?

What challenge do you have? How do you make it make you better? Ryan Holiday describes it as the obstacle is the way. It's not a pain, it's not something you want to avoid. It's life. We're always going to have obstacles in our way. And then Nassim Taleb describes it beautifully as being antifragile. I'm going to do a note on his great book soon. The basic idea there is you can be fragile and when something challenging happens, you just break. Or you can be robust. Which basically means that if something challenging happens, you can sustain a level of effort for a while. You're stronger than fragile. But he says, what about being antifragile? When you're antifragile and you break your right hand, you say, I'm going to have an extraordinary left hook at the end of this, you turn poison into medicine. Another way he describes it is to imagine wind, right? This is wind blowing. Now if you're just a little candle, that wind will extinguish your flame. But if you're a huge fire, the fire will actually be fueled by the wind. The wind comes into the fire and makes it bigger. That's how we want to approach our challenges. We Want them to make us stronger. So we want to identify what in your life is a negative, you're currently perceiving as a negative or it is just a negative. And how do you turn that into a positive? Example in our family, Alexandra, as I recently shared, had a couple of seizures in 24 hours. It was, frankly, terrifying. Now, that's poison.

That's a negative.

And we're committed to turning the poison into medicine. We're committed to making the obstacle the way we're antifragile. We're going to use that to make us stronger in our commitment to optimize and actualize. So we've done a ton of research. Just this morning, we set up an appointment with Daniel.

Amen. To go into his lab.

We're both actually going to get spect scans. And this negative event is already making our lives better. Poison into medicine. Broken right hand, left hook. So the question for you is, what negative thing is going on in your life? And how do you quit being a candle about it and be a fire? Be committed to being fueled by your challenge. Be antifragile. Make that obstacle the path to your optimization and actualization. Turn that poison into medicine. It's worth thinking about. And then practice it not just with the big things, but with the little things. When you find little annoying things negative. Okay, cool. How do you make that positive? You're stuck in traffic. Well, you used to complain about it. Now you're going to use it as a positive opportunity to reframe your experience. Be grateful that you're even in a car. Opportunity to breathe and to center yourself and to gain a perspective on all that is wonderful. Whatever. Strengthen your muscles with the small annoyances and challenges such that you can handle the big ones with more grace. That is Left hook. Inspired by Ronda Rousey. Next time you break your right hand, turn it into an awesome left hook.

All right, what's your big one right now?

You can work on.

Have fun with that. Look forward to sharing more. Have another awesome day. See ya. Hey, guys, this is Brian. A lot of people don't know what I do beyond these YouTube videos I put up. So I thought I'd give you a quick tour of our membership platform. Thousands of people have joined us already. 10 bucks a month get access to a ton of stuff that in addition to what I put up on YouTube for free. So the basic idea is you just watched a micro class. Hope you enjoyed that. I share. I just started doing these micro classes, but I Now share over 50 of these per month. We've shared dozens so far and it's basically a quick class on my absolute favorite stuff across the different domains of optimal living. Two to three maybe five minute little micro classes on how to optimize your life. In addition to that you get access to every single one of our Philosophers notes. We now have over 250 philosophers notes on some really really good books. A lot of them in each one of them. You're familiar with the PNTV videos if you've watched many of those. But we also have PDFs and MP3s of our Philosopher's notes. So here's. Let's take a look at what a PDF looks like. This is an example of a Philosopher's Note. It's a six page PDF where I basically share some of my favorite thoughts, riff on it, talk about how other teachers say the same things, and give you a nice playful kick in the butt to go out and apply the wisdom that is a Philosopher's Note. I record that as an MP3 that you can download as well. And 250 of those, I produce 10 of those at least per month that I share with you. In addition to the micro classes. And then you also get access to all of our old classes, we have the five day immersion reboot habits 101, confidence 101, getting stuff done 101, meditation 101 and then future classes including relationships 101, energy 101, purpose 101, biz 101 goals 101, etc. So there you go. Really blessed to have some extraordinary support and I will share with you where you go to sign up. I'll put a link to this, but basically cruise on over here. You can sign up. And this is the kind of response we've gotten so far from our members. It's pretty neat. I've made more positive changes in my life, My brief membership only 3 months so far than I did through years of counseling. Yes. Brian Johnson, you rockstar. Thank you very much, that's very kind of you. And I'm making huge strides in optimizing my life as a result of your Philosopher's Notes and optimal living classes. I spend $19 a month on my gym membership to take care of my body. A mere $10 a month on an optimal living membership is the biggest value invest investment I've ever made in my emotional, mental and spiritual health. Thank you for the incredible work you're doing to inspire us to be rock stars in our own lives. Unbelievably inspiring and humbling. In 24 hours, we received hundreds of extraordinary notes from members around the world. So there you go. That's a quick look at what we're up to. $10 a month. Hope to astonish you. There you go.