Brian Johnson explores Picasso's advice to find work that brings as much happiness as spare time. He connects this to Maslow's self-actualization and shares Michael Gelb's journaling exercise: ask yourself "How can you get paid to do what you love to do now?" The goal is dissolving the boundary between work, play, and love.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last couple 1s we spent some time with my Yoda, Phil and some creative exemplars, Picasso and Pressfield. Today I want to chat about another Picasso quote on how he approached his work that I found when I was looking for the one on the fact that inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. Picasso tells us, and I quote, look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time. Now, when I read that, I thought of a number of things. First I thought of Abraham Maslow's wisdom. See our notes on motivation and personality on the self actualizing human being. Maslow tells us that we want to reach a point where the apparent dichotomy between our work and our play and I would offer our love has dissolved. Then I thought of this Lawrence Pearsall, Jack's Wisdom. He tells us a master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing to himself. He always seems to be doing both enough for him that he does it well. That's a good one. Then I thought of a text exchange I recently had with a friend who was concerned about my commitment to showing up every single day at 1:01pm Central Time to support our heroic masters in getting their soul force to to 101. Here's the text exchange friend. The mastery looks amazing. I'm sure the team has asked you this before, but are you sure you can do a session every single day? Moving forward weekdays, weekends, holidays, vacation days, et cetera? That's intense. Me yes and yes. And my daimon and Phil and wifey say all caps. Yes. Me again. Next text. It's crazy and that's perfect. Me with the next text. I kiss my wife and hug my kids every day. I'll do the same with our community. And then I said, the dichotomy between work and play has dissolved. And my friend said, Love it. Three exclamation points now in purpose 101 and purpose 102. Check those out in the links. I talk about finding something you love to do so much that you would pay to do it. Now, that was inspired by a journaling exercise I did over 20 years ago while reading how to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. Check out those notes. In that great book, Michael Gelb tells us that da Vinci was intensely curious and encourages us to do a 100 questions exercise to channel some of that curiosity. Then Michael Gelb tells us to focus our attention on some power questions. I chose to focus on this one. How can you get paid to do what you love to do now? At the time, and this was nearly. And this was actually, what, 25 years ago? Almost 25 years ago, I was absolutely passionate about understanding how to live optimally so I could actualize my potential and help others do the same. I, if you haven't noticed, still am intensely passionate about the exact same thing now. I spent decades crafting a life in which I could do that for a living. And now I would literally pay to hang out with amazing human beings chatting about how to show up as our best, most heroic selves so we can change the world together. I brush my teeth every day. I meditate every day. I kiss my wife and hug my kids every day. And I'm blessed to connect with some of my dearest friends and most inspired and inspiring human beings on the planet every single day. Day O Valente. I have the energy to focus on this win for as consistently long as I can and bless all of you with whom I get to hang out. Day one. All in. Let's go, hero. And if you want to learn more about that program, check out Heroic US Mastery or Heroic US Coach. Let's go.
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