A short YouTube 'Heroic +1' message from Brian Johnson using his son Emerson’s journey toward chess mastery to illustrate the importance of a growth mindset, specificity in goals, disciplined practice, and celebrating progress. The video includes a personal anecdote, parenting/teaching encouragement, and a call-to-action to join the new 'Heroic Mastery' program.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last plus one, we talked about Emerson's aspirations to become a chess master and the fact that if you want to be really good at something, you need to be willing to start out being really bad at it. We also started whooping our goal and talked about the importance of specificity in goal setting, teaching heroic kids the science of turning our dreams into reality. The for the win. Now, I drafted that plus one with Emerson leaning on my shoulder as we recreated our dialogue and unpacked the wisdom before going on a trail walk together holding hands. One of my favorite things now, after I reread it and edited it, we printed it out. He pulled it out of the printer tray and stapled it and I put it on my pile. That was the eighth plus one I had drafted for the next studio session in which I planned to film 30 of them. Now, as we discussed in a recent plus one, when I'm hammering plus one deep work riding, I put 30 plus ones up on my whiteboard and then I systematically cross them off as I go. I asked Emerson if he'd like to stand on my chair and draw a line through the eighth plus one on my whiteboard. He said, yeah, awesome. He drew one line through that plus one and wanted to draw an X through it, but I said, not yet. I only get one line now. I'll get the X when I read it again and make final edits, then John will come out and we'll film all 30. When I'm done with that, I'll erase all the plus ones with the X's and say, that's like me as I celebrate. Then I thanked him for his help and told him how excited I was to help him achieve his goals with chess and in life. Then he told me, I'm serious. When I'm a chess master, almost no one will be able to beat me. To which I laughed and said, I know. And you know what's super cool? Playing those people who can be you is going to be awesome as well. You know why? To which he immediately said, of course I'm going to learn a ton from them. To which I smiled and celebrated his growth mindset as I had a moment of wishing someone had taught me the power of a growth mindset so I didn't need to spend 40 plus years of my life figuring out the fact that it's about winning or learning. And learning is winning, so you win or you win. Then I celebrated the fact that we and that would be me and you and all of us are raising the next generation of heroes through our example and instruction as parents and educators. And that's today's plus one. What do you want to master in your life? Are you willing to have the humility to recognize that you've got to shine a flashlight on what's working and what's not working? And then bring a hammer of discipline to move from theory to practice to mastery so we can change the world together? Fantastic as always. Day one. All in. Let's go. I can't type that theory to practice to mastery line these days without thinking about our new Heroic Mastery program. We launched it a week ago. If you feel so inspired, join us. Hero Heroic US Mastery.
