A short micro-class by Brian Johnson explaining the amygdala as a "mind alarm" (oversensitive alarm driving fight-or-flight) and arguing meditation cools or recalibrates that response. The chunk also contains a promotional overview of Johnson's paid membership platform (micro classes, philosopher's notes, PDFs/MP3s, and multi-day courses) and pricing ($10/month).
Hi, this is Brian.
Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on meditation mind alarm. It's inspired by success through stillness. Russell Simmons is a super funny, casual guy.
Reading this book feels like you're kind.
Of just hanging out and talking to him. Super intense, funny, wise guy. Anyway, he uses a lot of great metaphors. One of the most helpful, I think is this idea of there's your brain. In your brain, somewhere in this region, you have a limbic system. Your limbic system is one of the older parts of your brain that is responsible for your basic emotions and stuff like fight or flight.
This is a highly abridged description of it, right?
And he says that your amygdala, almond shaped, sits right about there, give or take.
Might be over here.
What's to say? It's here for now, right? And then amygdala kind of acts as like a guard to your limbic system. It is sitting there interpreting your world to see what requires a response from your limbic system should you get into fight or flight, right? So if you have a super hot amygdala, he says it's kind of like having a car alarm that goes nuts at the simplest thing. So a car alarm is useful. You want to have a car alarm if you're concerned about having someone steal your car, but you don't want to have a car alarm go off on things that aren't really a threat, right? So if a car drives by with loud music, your car alarm shouldn't go off. If the wind is kind of blowing, your car alarm should not go off. It's the exact same thing with our lives, right? If we have an oversensitive amygdala, it's kind of like having this oversensitive car alarm and every little thing that goes on in our lives, that person said this and boom. Your amygdala says, hey, let's blow up our fight or flight. Release all kinds of stress toxins because our life is blowing up. No, it was actually just a car driving by. No one was trying to steal your car.
You can settle down.
You don't need to trigger this intense response. Now the whole point of this is that one of the ways to calibrate your amygdala mind alarm system is via meditation. It's proven to, to cool this hot amygdala. So you view proper things as threats. We wanna keep this fight or flight there. Certain things require a deep response, right? But not every single little petty thing that ever goes on. So know that meditation provides that benefit. And if you have a mind alarm that goes nuts at the smallest things, and you're not meditating.
You may wanna invest 20 minutes in.
The morning, he would say, and 20 minutes at night. But invest some time in cooling your mind off in training your amygdala to respond properly, rather than like this crazy alarm, which of course annoys not only the car owner but everyone around them. If you're the type of person that blows up at every little thing that goes on, you're blaring his alarm, which.
Is annoying for you and everyone else. So let's cool it down.
Let's prioritize Meditation.
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's 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 philosopher's notes. We now have over 250 philosopher's 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 three months so far, than I did through years of counseling. Yes. Brian Johnson, you are a rock star. 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 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 bucks a month. Hope to astonish you. There you go.
