Micro Class - Left Hook

You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. 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 yout 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 Ronda looks just like her, right? And she is in a fight and. 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? And 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, 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 gonna 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 anti fragile. 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 we're both actually gonna 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 anti fragile. 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 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. 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. 10 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 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 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. 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