Brian Johnson explains how connecting to your core values and inner guiding spirit helps you overcome internal barriers. Writing about what matters to you improves academic performance and weight loss. Training yourself to talk supportively in your head is the daily practice that keeps you aligned with your daimon.
Questions this episode answers
Chapter 2, 'Overcome your demons and enemies.'
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last one, we spent some time with Matt Higgins, who encouraged us to burn the boats. And as per the subtitle of his book, toss plan B overboard and unleash your full potential. Today we're going to spend some more time lighting a fire to mediocrity. We're going to talk about how to overcome your demons. Let's get straight to work. Matt tells us, and I quote, the written word is even more powerful. In one study, students from marginalized groups who write about the values that are most important to them, like confidence, creativity, empathy and independence, received higher grades than a control group. In another study, dieters who wrote about what they valued the most, relationships, religion and health, lost more weight than those who didn't. Strengthening your identity, reaffirming what you stand for and what you believe in, makes it easier to hold your ground when confronted by challenges from outside and even from within. He continues by saying, we all have to train the voice in our head to be our biggest ally because the most impactful conversations you'll ever have in life will be with yourself. Too often we let our self talk tear us down before the world is even gets a shot in. Who gives you a harder time? Your boss or yourself? Anticipating what your boss is going to say to you over some perceived shortcoming, we short circuit our efforts and become even worse than the haters we fear. You can't do that and expect to succeed. Instead, you need to treat yourself with the same kindness you'd extend to a friend. When we come to understand that the only approval that matters in life is our own, we realize we have the power to inoculate ourselves from all external scorn and ridicule. Now that's from chapter number two, overcome your demons and enemies. Two things I want to highlight here. First, in the opening paragraph, Matt talks about the power of identities and values. As he reminds us, science says when you connect to the values that matter most to you, you will outperform those who don't. And guess what? We architected the big three protocol in the Heroic app. With that in mind, we need to know who we are at our best. Our identities. And we need to know what virtues, AKA values that version of us embodies. And most importantly, we need to know what that best heroic version of us does to be in integrity with that identity and with those virtues. And boom. When we live in integrity with that best version of ourselves, we win the ultimate game. As we activate our soul force and show up more energized productive, and connected than ever. Now here's what's really interesting. As we've discussed countless times, when we live in integrity with our best selves, we connect to our inner Daimons, that guiding spirit within each of us. Remember, the word demon is just the diminutive of daimon. So today's plus one if you want to overcome your demons, you need to make sure you're staying connected to your Daimon, When? All day, every day. Especially today. Little P.S. as I read the line about having great conversations with yourself, I thought of another plus one called don't listen to Yourself, Talk to Yourself, inspired by Darren Donnelly's the Mental Game. Check that out.
