Brian Johnson (host) presents a short Heroic +1 podcast episode arguing that exceptional people ignore realistic statistical odds and pursue ambitious, seemingly unrealistic goals. He references Bob Rotella’s idea that champions decide what they want and go all in, and quotes Stanford design thinker Bernard Roth (The Achievement Habit) on how statistics show trends but can’t predict individual lives — noting the long shots (e.g., musicians, Beatles, Elvis) who beat the odds. The episode ends with a direct motivational call to define what you truly want, decide the price to pay, and begin acting heroically today.
Questions this episode answers
Brian Johnson
The Odds of Success: Ignore Them If You Want to Do Great Things (Heroic +1 #1,733)
The Achievement Habit by Bernard (Bernie) Roth
91 years old
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last plus one we talked about Bob Rotella and how champions think. As you may recall, Rotella, who is one of the all time great peak performance coaches, tells us that exceptional people think differently than average people. Note, by definition, exceptional people are the exception to the norm. How do exceptional people think differently? Well, among many other things. In short, they ignore realistic goals and decide what they want, what price they'll need to pay to get it. And then they go all in in pursuit of that unrealistic goal as they create their reality rather than conform to mediocrity. Rotella's thoughts on average people being overly influenced by realistic statistics reminds me of the great Stanford professor and design thinker Bernard Roth's wisdom from his great book the Achievement Habit. Bernard Roth has been a professor of engineering at Stanford for over 50 years. He's 91 years old. As I create this. A pioneer in the field of robotics, Bernie is one of the founders of the famed D School at Stanford where he and his colleagues came up with the whole design thinking framework. In his great book, he brings the concepts of design thinking to life in the context of our most important design project, designing our optimal Lives. He tells us, and I quote, statistics show you trends, they can't predict your life. Likewise, consider that the odds have always been against greatness. If one were to decide on a career path just by the odds of financial success, we would have no movie stars, authors, poets or musicians. The odds of any one person becoming a professional self supporting musician are very low. And yet turn on the radio and you hear hundreds of them. The odds were against the Beatles, Elvis and the Grateful Dead too. They could have been scientific about the whole thing and chosen more reasonable career paths. What a loss for the world that would have been. He continues by saying, if you succeed, the odds are then meaningless. Any path may have a 2% success rate. Yet if you're in that 2%, there's a hundred percent chance of success for you. The long shots are often the most rewarding. End quote. And that's today's plus one. Are you paying a little too much attention to the supposed odds of your success? I repeat, what do you really want? And I repeat, this isn't a dress rehearsal. If you feel so inspired, flip the switch. Invite the best, most heroic version of yourself to join us. Stand up a little taller. Take a nice deep breath. Chest up, chin down. Calm, confident. Now get clear on what you want. What would you achieve if you truly activated your heroic potential? Now get clear on the price you're going to need to pay to create that reality and get to work paying it today.
