PNTV: The Common Denominator of Success by Albert E.N. Gray (#313)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes. TV Today I've got another great book, the New Common Denominator of Success by Albert Ian Gray. The Common Denominator of Success. Now this barely qualifies as a book. It's a little pamphlet. My Philosopher's Note is nearly as long as this little guy. 1940, Albert en Gray, Prudential Insurance guy, gave a speech that has become very, very, very popular. You can find it online for free. Just search Common Denominator of Success. Pick this copy up for a couple bucks on Amazon if you want a physical version of it like this. I hesitated to do an episode and a note on it because it's so short, but I've gotten some great feedback on another tiny little book which was also a speech. James Stockdale' Courage Under Pressure. And then we have As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, the Science of Getting Rich. The Science of Being Great by Wallace D. Wattles. All of which are short and packed with wisdom. So I decided to jump in. Here we are, we've got a Philosopher's Note, a bunch of big ideas. Let's define the common denominator of success. So what is the common denominator of success? Albert EN Gray tells us that the common denominator of success, what successful people do is they have made a habit of doing the things that failures don't like to do. They've made a habit of doing the things that failures don't like to do. That's the common denominator of success. It's very, very simple. And it was funny because as I was writing this this morning, I got up super early. Like crazy early even by my standards. A few hours earlier, for whatever reason, if you know me, I like eight hours of sleep, optimal sleep, 101, my number one self care habit. But couldn't go back to sleep, so just hopped out of bed. We're talking like 2:30 or so. I'm like whatever, all right, we'll make this a good day. No big deal. Meditated, did my five minutes of movement, then I showed up to do my writing. And I was feeling considerably less inspired and enthusiastic than I usually do when I sit down at work in the morning. The best part was that I could observe that and say, that's nice. Okay, now what needs to get done? David Reynolds, Constructive Living Style It's a Wednesday morning, I'm recording this on a Wednesday. And I write am one deep work time block, which is the time after I wake up, before the family wakes up. I create A Philosopher's note. A PDF first thing in the morning. This is what I do. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If I'm not teaching on a Monday, I don't need to think about it, right? Scott Adams style. I'm not wasting a brain cell thinking about what I'm going to do. And whether I feel like it or not has nothing to do with whether I do it or not. And it's fascinating because the old me would have checked in and said, oh, you're tired, just take today off. It's not a big deal. And I would have gone online and done whatever. Right now, the new me, I've created so many bright lines of what I'm going to do and commitments to what I'm going to do. And I've created standards that I just need to perform. There's really no negotiation, no option here. I started working, actually, I reflected on that. And that mere ability to notice how I was feeling and to say, that doesn't matter now, I'm going to do what needs to get done felt so good. It's what David Reynolds talks about. He says, there's no better feeling in the world than to not feel like doing something and be able to get yourself to do it. Right? What does feeling like it have to do with it? What needs to get done? Go do that. So. So that's the basic idea of the common denominator of success. We want to get to a point where we make a habit of doing things that the older versions of ourselves. Right. And people who don't achieve a high level of success don't make a habit of doing. So look into your life and think about all the things that you don't like doing and see if you can reorient your relationship to it and realize that a lot of people don't like doing a lot of things, successful people, but they do them anyway. And why? Because they're more focused on the results than they are the methods. So he has a great line, old school style, right? He says that successful people are more concerned with pleasing results than with pleasing methods. In our last episode on the Confidence Gap, we talked about the fact Russ Harris tells us modern day mindfulness meets cognitive behavioral therapy, right? Acceptance and commitment training. He tells us, look, you have two options in life. You can live the rest of your life. Option number one, where you take action toward your goals when you feel like it, when you're feeling good, you're feeling psyched up, you're inspired. Life is good. You do what you feel inspired to do, right? But if you're not, then you just don't do it and you wait until you feel inspired. He says, good luck with that because you're going to be waiting a lot of the time for a long time and you may never get anything done. Or option two, you have clarity on what you want to do, which is what we're going to talk about in the next big idea. And then you do what needs to get done whether you feel like it or not. That has nothing to do with it. You are more interested in pleasing results in the outcomes you're going to create with your behaviors than you are in feeling like it all the time. Common denominator of success, Making a habit of doing what needs to get done whether you feel like it or not. Now how do you do that? Albert tells us that the way that successful people get themselves to do this is they have a very strong purpose. Their purpose is their engine. They've activated themselves with a purpose that really fires them up and they're willing to put all their energy into it and then they're willing to burn through the inevitable challenges and not feeling like it. Days that arise. Right? We talk about activation energy all the time. Water doesn't boil at 200 degrees or 210. It boils at 212 degrees. Rub sticks together, nothing happens till 451 degrees. You need to have a purpose that fires you up. When you have a purpose that fires you up, it will burn through the obstacles that get in the way of people who don't have the same type of purpose and fire. This is our motivation equation. Right. Motivation equals expectancy times value over impulsivity times delay. You need to have a goal you really value and that you expect to be able to achieve if you want to have high motivation. If you don't, you're going to have low motivation. Which means that this is the emphasis your impulsivity. What is impulsivity? Impulsivity is doing what you feel like doing because it feels good. I just created, filmed a class on Willpower 101 on Monday of this week. And I talk about a research study that Walter Mischel talks about in the marshmallow test. Fascinating stuff. Won't go into the details. Right. Bringing kids into the lab. Right. You can get one marshmallow now or two marshmallows if you wait. That predicted their overall well being, their ability to delay gratification. That 20 minute exercise predicted things in their lives decades later. It's crazy and it's totally teachable how to get better at it. Which are all the things that we talk about here. Anyway, he has a study in there. He talks about where you can slide someone into the FMRI machine, right? And, and you can ask them, hey, think about yourself. Okay, cool. You got it. It lights up a certain part of your brain. Then you say, okay, think about a stranger and it lights up a different part of their brain. Then the part of the study is they ask them, okay, cool. So now think about your future self. Think about yourself in 10 years. And they look and see what part of their brain lights up. And what's fascinating is the more willpower someone has, the more connection they have to to their ability to delay gratification, the deeper the connection they have to their future self. And it maps over in their brain. People who have low willpower, right? Low ability to delay gratification, their future self looks more like a stranger than themselves in an FMRI little scan. Whereas those with higher degrees of willpower and ability to delay gratification have a deeper connection. Their future self shows up more like their self than a stranger. It's crazy, right? So the point of that is we need to strengthen our connection to our future selves. And one of the ways to do that is to have a strong purpose. When we have a stronger purpose and a stronger connection to our future self, that fires us up. We do the right thing right now. We don't give in to impulses and eat the one marshmallow. We're willing to wait because we want to be nice to our future self. Because we know and I know that that me sitting down and doing the work this morning, I was going to feel way better at the end of the day and tomorrow and at the end of the month. When I look back on the month, if I did what needed to get done, whether I felt like it or not, than if I impulsively said, I'm going to skip today and I already do feel great. I felt great five minutes into it. It's on fire. And I've been super productive and get a lot done between 2:30am and 8:30am before the family gets up or 8am whatever it was. So anyway, get clear on your purpose. What is your purpose? Can you define it? Can you explain it in a sentence? Do you reflect on it on a daily basis? Does that drive you? Because that's going to be the engine that gets you fired up about these results. To ignore occasional unpleasant methods. There you go, getting fired up. The fourth big idea here is that the habits that you create create your future so we talked about common denominator. Come back to it. Can you recall what it is? Make it stick style right now think about what is the common denominator of success. I've already mentioned it a few times. Can you recall it and embrace that difficulty. Don't be lazy about it. Be excited about it and say, huh, what was it? Let me think about it. Oh yeah, it was. What was it? That active recall is actually the best possible way to make something stick. A la make it stick. The science of Effective Learning so the common denominator of success that we've defined is what? Successful people make a habit of doing things that failures don't like doing. So we need to make that a habit. You have this future self that's pulling you toward it and you make a habit of doing the right things day in and day out. That's how we create our futures. Obviously, Albert says that you're going to have habits one way or another. They're either going to be conscious or they're going to be unconscious. And your life today is simply an aggregation of all of your habits. So if you want a better life in the future, simply start reworking your habits. Habits 101 style. One of my favorite classes we've done so far. If you haven't checked that one out yet, check it out. It's free. Go to BrianJohnson Me Habits and check out the class my best ideas on how to create habits. For now, think about what your number one habit is that you could start doing now that you can install into your life right now that would have the most positive impact in your life. What is it? What habit is going to help you fulfill that purpose and these results the most? Is it exercise? Is it nutrition? Is it optimizing your energy in a specific way? Is it getting more sleep? Is it creating consistently in a deep work time block? What is your number one keystone habit? Think about it, reflect on it. We're going to talk about what to do about it in the next one, right? And then on the other side, what's your number one negative habit? What's the thing you're doing these days that's just slowing you down? It's like trying to drive on the freeway with one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brakes, right? You can't go anywhere and you're burning up your brakes and it's just not a pretty picture, right? Squealing around. You don't want to do that. What's the number one negative habit you have that you need to drop that when you drop it will have the most positive impact on your life. Plus one minus one I love coming back to this all the time. I do so in the classes because I do so in my life. This is a never ending awesome question to ask. There's always something we could be doing more of, and there's always something we could be letting go of. Hopefully we're spiraling up right where there are more powerful additions and and less destructive minuses. But there's always room to optimize. So figure that out. Remember that habits equal your future. And then our fifth big idea is to resolve, do and create a new world. Here's a great line that I share in the note on the fact that you need to resolve to create a new habit and to do the things that your prior self didn't want to do. And then you need to do that. You can't just resolve. You need to do it today and then guess what? Tomorrow you need to make a new commitment and you need to execute it again. And then the day after that you need to make a new commitment and you need to execute again. And you do that every single day, whether you feel like it or not. You make a habit of doing the things you didn't used to like to do. And then what happens? He says, one day you wake up and you're a different person and you're in a different world and you look back at who you used to be and you can't even remember the things you used to do. It's awesome for me to look back at my life over the last 5, 10, 15, 20 years and the things that I used to struggle with and the ups and downs and all the things that I've talked about in these episodes. It's awesome for me to look at it and go, I'm literally living in a different world now than I was 20 years ago. Not in one. Snap my fingers. That used to be my biggest issue, is I used to think I could change it immediately. You can't change it immediately. You can't change it in a weekend workshop or one inspiring whatever. It's systematically incrementally showing up and just getting a little bit better day in and day out, making gains, securing those gains, and then making more gains day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And in my case now, decade after decade. And then it gets exciting because you can look back and you can look forward and realize you still haven't done anything yet. What are you really capable of in the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 decades, God willing, depending on where we are. Maybe more if you're on the younger side, maybe a little less if you're not. But in any case, know that you need to recommit every single day and make it an infinite process. And don't be skipping days and don't be skipping two days. I talk about that in the note. We talk about it again in habits 101. And in the process, you're going to create a great future. You're going to bring this future to life, this great purpose of yours. You're going to be more interested in the results than how you feel. And as a result, you will be living in integrity with the common denominator of success. You will make a habit of doing the things that failures don't like to do. Now that's exciting. Alright, got all fired up in this one. Hope you enjoyed what was your favorite big idea. How are you going to make it a bigger part of your life? Get on that and have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube, so I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month. Join the Optimal Living Membership Program. You get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes on some of the best Optimal Living books out there. Old school classics, Positive Psychology, Modern stuff, Mindfulness, Peak Performance, purpose, neuroscience, wealth, etc. And what you may not know is that in addition to the PNTV episodes, I create PDFs on all these great books. So six page PDFs. Let's take a look at one of them. Joseph Campbell, you want to figure out how to live your hero's journey? Well, this is a great place to start. I basically pull out my favorite big ideas, riff on them, connect them to other books and other ideas and help you apply this wisdom to your life today. That's what the PDF looks like again. We have 250 of these on all these different great books and then I record those PDFs as an MP3 so you can listen to that MP3 while you're on a walk or working out or doing some errands or whatever that is. Philosopher's Notes. A lot going on there. And then in addition to Philosopher's Notes you get access to Optimal Living classes Optimal Living 101 idea here is that all those great teachers come back to the same big ideas again and again and again. I distill those ideas into classes. 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