The Study of a Good Soul and How To Operationalize Virtue via Ancient Wisdom + Modern Science + Practical Optimizing Tools (Preview)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimized Mastery series. Today we're going to talk about module 1, eudaimonology, the study of a good soul and how to operationalize virtue via ancient wisdom plus modern science plus practical optimizing tools. As always, we have 10 big ideas followed by a practice with reflection and action exercises. Let's start with a quick overview and then we'll jump in. The first idea we got to know the game we're playing and how to play it well. We're going to invite Aristotle and Martin Seligman. Ancient wisdom, modern science. We're going to ask them, hey, what's the ultimate game we're playing? And you know what? They're gonna give us the exact same answer. Number two. We're gonna have a warning. We need to know that it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Krishnamurti tells us happiness comes in two different forms. Hedonic, eudaimonic. Society is selling us the wrong form. We're going to talk about why that matters and how to play the right game. Well, the third big idea. Meet your new bff Optimus. You, super you, the genius within. Getting an integrity with that best version of you is ultimately what this is all about. We're going to make a formal introduction and we're going to spend some time flipping the switch so we can be that best version of ourselves right now. Number four. We're going to talk about becoming virtue connoisseurs. The word connoisseur comes from the same root as cognition. It means to know, to learn. We want to become experts in and have fine taste for virtue. We're going to invite our ancient wisdom philosophers back. We're going to talk about modern science, four virtues, six virtues and the four virtues of optimize. And we're going to talk about vice. Knowing about the vice of excess and deficiency as we become again experts in virtue. Our fifth big idea. The top five times two. Science says there are five virtues unique to you and universal to all of us that we want to engage in. We're going to talk about how to learn what your unique virtues are, put them in action. And what the universally most powerful, most highly correlated to happiness virtues are. Which leads us to numbers 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 ideas. Gratitude, hope, zest, curiosity and love. Those are our five virtues that are most highly correlated to our well being. Gratitude. We're going to talk about the stats in Big idea. Number six, they're eye popping. To quote Robert Emmons, the leading researcher in the field, you will be 25% happier if you keep a gratitude journal once a week. Crazy stuff. We'll talk about other stats. We'll talk about how to get your gratitude on our seventh. Big idea is hope. There are three facets to. To optimizing our hope. Number one, we gotta have a clear goal, a better future. Number two, agency, a confidence in the fact that we can do it. And number three, the willingness to take multiple pathways. We're gonna unpack that a lot today and again and again and again in the months ahead. Our eighth idea is zest. This is actually the number one most highly correlated virtue to our well being. It's what we would call energy. It's why we spend two and a half months helping us dial in our fundamentals so our energy is strong. Our ninth big idea, the virtue, Curiosity. We want to bring a flashlight to our oopses to our mistakes, not a hammer. Data is awesome. We want to have a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. An experimenter's mindset. Put on a lab coat, look at the data and get a little bit better. We're going to talk about the virtue of curiosity and the vice of excess and deficiency. For this virtue and all of them, you, you can have too much curiosity, become a perfectionist. Don't want to do that. Or you can numb yourself, not pay any attention at all. Don't want to do that. And each of these virtues will have its own tool that we'll use to calibrate and find our virtuous expression. Our tenth big idea, Love. We could easily say this is in fact the most important virtue, why we do all that we do. We're going to unpack this and look at love from a bunch of different angles. We're going to have fun with Barbara Fredrickson's idea of love 2.0, but also talk about love. 0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, infinity.0. Love for yourself, your family, your community, your world and life. So Those are our 10 big ideas. We're going to have an 11th one in each one of these sessions, Practice, which is going to have two elements, reflection plus action. Our head coach, Michael, is going to join us and he's going to walk us through how to move from theory to practice to mastery using our workbook and our worksheets so we can show up most powerfully today. With that, let's jump in. All right, so with our first idea here, we got to step all the way back and ask ourselves, what's the game we're actually playing here in this one precious life of ours? What's the game and how do we play it? Well. And as we discuss all the time, we want to look at what ancient wisdom has to say, we. What modern science has to say, and then get into a really practical framework. We've done so via the protocol we've developed. But as an exercise, let's do this. Let's invite a representative from ancient wisdom and one from modern science. Let's go with Aristotle, representing the classic Greek philosophy model, and Martin Seligman, as you probably know, the founder of the modern positive psychology movement. So we've got Aristotle, we've got Martin Seligman in the room. Lucky us, separated by 2,500 years. And we say, hey, guys, what's the ultimate game we're playing? What is life ultimately all about? And you know what? They're going to answer the question in literally the exact same way. Now, Aristotle spoke Greek, of course. Seligman speaks English, of course. But get this. Aristotle says, eudaimonia via arete. If that was how he was going to, he'd give us three words to answer. The ultimate game, the ultimate meaning of life. Eudaimonia via arete. We're going to unpack what that means in a moment. But guess what? Martin Seligman would say. Flourishing via living with virtue, putting your virtues in action. And as it turns out, that's essentially an English translation of what Aristotle said. So let's define our terms. Eudaimonia via arte. Why do we call this module eudaimonology? We call it that because eudaimonia literally means good soul. Eu plus daimon soul, eu daimon good soul. Aristotle said that is the summum bonum, the highest good of life. Read his ethics or. Or read our notes on his ethics, and that's what you'll see. The highest good of life, the ultimate game, is to live with a good soul. Eudaimon and eudaimonia, what does that lead to? Well, in English, we translate that as happiness, but that's actually a really weak translation of the word eudaimonia. It means something much deeper, something closer to flourishing or expressing the best version of yourself. When moment to moment to moment. When you do that and you close that gap we talk about between who you're capable of being and who you're actually being, you feel great. There's no room for any of the anxiety, regret, disillusionment, Ick. But it's not a kind of saccharine, overly sweet sense of happiness. It's a deep sense of joy and knowing that you're doing what you're here to do on the planet Eudaimonia. Then you ask Aristotle. Okay, that sounds cool. I really do want to express the best version of myself. How do I do that? How do I close the gap between who I'm capable of being and who I'm actually being? How do I play that ultimate game? Well, one word answer, arete. Which, as we've said in different contexts, we had to summarize our entire philosophy in one word. It's this arete. And this phrase, eudaimonia via arete. Now, arete directly translates as virtue, excellence, but it too has a deeper meaning. It means something closer to expressing the best version of yourself. Moment to moment to moment. There's a best version of you. And you're capable of being some version of you in any given moment. And to the extent you live with arete, you live with that virtue, that excellence. You will experience eudaimonia. All right, so thank you, Aristotle. We really appreciate your perspective. Eudaimonia via arete. Professor Seligman, what do you have to say? What do you say is the ultimate game of life? You know what he would say? What he said literally. Look at Martin Seligman's latest book title. You know what it's called? Flourish. You know what that is? The English version of the word Eudaimonia. Then ask Professor Seligman, okay, well, how do we flourish? How do we express the best version of ourselves? You know what he'd say? Put your virtues in action. Literally. Viacharacter.org we're going to have you go to that site. Your virtues in action. That's the underpinning of all the goodness we want to experience. Eudaimonia via arete. Flourishing via virtues in action. So there you go. That's the ultimate game we're playing and how to play it well. Eudaimonia via arete. Flourishing via putting your virtues in action. Obviously, we can talk about all of the high level philosophical stuff for quite a while. Hey, this is Brian again. I hope you enjoyed that overview of a Mastery series session and got some wisdom out of it. You can apply to your life today. What was it again? You can learn more about our Optimize Coach program at Optimize Me Coach. And here's a fun little video we put together featuring some of our Optymyze coach graduates describing what they got out of our program and why they loved it so much. You can also check out hundreds of other testimonials at Optimize Me, Coach. Have an awesome day and let's do this.