Brian Johnson argues that studying heroes should focus on their struggles and hard work, not their effortless greatness. He contrasts mastery modeling, which can discourage you, with coping modeling, which shows how people like Viktor Frankl and Marcus Aurelius actually overcame obstacles. The point: work hard today to build the strength to serve.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last plus one, we talked about Yogananda and his encouragement to study the lives of saints. As you may recall, somewhat surprisingly, at least to me, was the fact that he didn't tell us to study the lives of saints so we could soak in their natural born awesomeness per se. No, he told us to study the lives of saints so we can see just how hard they had to work to overcome the challenges they faced. All caps. Here's what's interesting. That's exactly what I see when I look most deeply at the heroic portraits on my wall. Yeah, I find all my heroes and who they became in service to the world deeply inspiring. But what hits me most powerfully, especially when the heroic gods are having an especially good time pushing me, is to feel just how hard they had to work to overcome the challenges that they all faced. Viktor Frankl overcame and heroically alchemized the horrors of the Holocaust to bring us his wisdom. Epictetus overcame slavery and being partially crippled to bring us his wisdom. Aurelius endured interminable wars and challenges to play his role well and bring us his wisdom. Abraham Lincoln endured the horrors of the Civil War to preserve our Union. Abraham Maslow cooked his hero bars while Mr. Rogers experienced his tortures of the damned. And so did Eleanor Roosevelt, who used the same intense language to describe her battles with fear. And Churchill endured his darkest hours and never gave in. All that to say it's easy to look at our heroes and see perfection. It's also super unhealthy to stop there. Donald Robertson and I talked about this in a recent heroic chat with Masters. He told us that mastery modeling, in which you focus on how great someone is and how not so great you are, can lead to despair at the idea you can never be like them. But coping, modeling, in which you see just how hard they had to work to overcome the challenges they faced, all caps again, is super empowering. And that's today's plus one. Think of your heroes and think of just how how hard they had to work to overcome the challenges they all faced. Then know that if they can conquer their obstacles, so can you. Then let's commit to working just as hard as we cultivate our heroic strength for two and give the world all we've got. Not someday. Today.
