17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson walks through his morning routine: checking aura scores, committing to a heroic protocol, picking a virtue from an app. He quotes Rick Rubin saying the best work is the work you're most excited about, connects it to Joseph Campbell's follow your bliss, and urges you to pursue what excites you.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Every morning I do pretty much the same thing, whether I'm in my bubble wrap at home or on the road. I get up, check out my aura scores. I'm an 88, 89 today. And commit to my heroic protocol. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. My intention is clear. I'm gonna do my best to show up as my best in my energy, my work, and my love. Then after I make those commitments and hit the first batch of targets, I go to our virtue compass in the app. Pick the virtue I'm fired up to embody. It's almost always discipline, courage, hope, or wisdom. Then I check out some inspiring quotes for that virtue. Then I do a quick screen grab of nine of those quotes and upload them to my heroic social profile. I can't think of a day I haven't done that. Actually, now that I do think about it, I think the last time I missed that was when I was in the Red Sea out on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower a few months ago when they turned the starlink off for 24 hours and I couldn't do anything online. So this morning I focused on wisdom. The number one quote I grabbed was by the great music producer Rick Rubin. The the quote was from his book the Creative act, in which he said the best work is the work you are most excited about. I love that. Reminds me of Joseph Campbell's admonition that we need to follow our bliss. As we've discussed and as I actually discuss in the documentary called Finding Joe, check out a trailer linked in the plus one and the full film also linked in this plus one. There is deep ancient spiritual wisdom in that perspective to follow your bliss. The brief recap well, the ancient sages of India told us in Sanskrit that there are three jumping off points to enlightenment, Sat, chit and ananda. Sat means beingness, chit means consciousness, and ananda means bliss. Joseph Campbell said that if he was honest with himself, he had no idea what proper being, beingness, or consciousness was, but his bliss that he could feel. And that is why he told us to follow our bliss. Important note later in his life, Campbell also said he wished he emphasized the importance of following your blisters as well. And that's today's plus one, the most important work. It's what you're most excited about. Now go crush that and give us everything you've got today.
