Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

Taming the metaphorical dragon.

14 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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Short excerpt from a Brian Johnson talk (YouTube) using a dragon-as-fear metaphor. Johnson argues that fear cannot be permanently eliminated; instead, repeatedly approaching what scares us lets us ‘tame’ or ‘ride’ the fear, revealing the valuable goals it guards. The emphasis is on action, repetition, and learning a new relationship with fear rather than trying to kill it.

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Phil Stutt says, action drives creativity, and you got to eat the death cookie. You got to do the thing that you're most scared to do. Again and again and again, we become afraid of one less thing, and we can look at it and go, oh, wow, that dragon actually wasn't so bad. And at the end of the day, we're not killing the dragon. We're learning how to ride it, because it's what takes us to the place that we want to get, and that's the relationship with fear that's really interesting. You can go out and try to kill the metaphorical dragon, get rid of the thing that scares you, or you can simply approach it, and you may need to battle it. But at some level, you realize that that dragon, of course, is hiding the treasure, which we understand the thing we really need. But when we really get it, we realize that we don't need to kill the dragon, because you can't. It just keeps on coming back in different form. But what if we can actually learn to tame it, train it, and then ride it? Bring it on.