Brian Johnson shares a morning moment with his son Emerson: he left his phone uncharged, Emerson plugged it in without being asked. Johnson calls these tiny acts the real language of love, drawing on ideas from Jim Rohn and Barbara Fredrickson about how small kindnesses compound.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. A couple ones ago we had a chat about Emerson and his aura scores and my micro act of love in the form of plugging in his charger so he wouldn't have to. Now that little act literally only takes me 15 seconds. It's absurdly easy to do. And as Jim Rohn would say, it is equally easy not to to do. He calls that the two easies Easy to do, easy not to do. A good noble heroic life is built by doing those easy things all day, every day. Especially on the days when insert whiny voice, you don't feel like it. So I actually drafted those plus ones before my meditation and before Emerson came into my office for that morning's aura sink of awesome. After he dropped his ring on the charger and came up to sit next to me on our pimff machine where I meditate, I told him about the plus ones I drafted and the fact that I spend that little amount of time to plug in his charger. Then I asked him, do you know what I'm thinking about when I do that? He said he wasn't sure. I asked him to spend a moment thinking about what I might be thinking about as I plugged in his charger and he sat in silence thinking about it. Then he sat longer as he contemplated what I was thinking about. As he continued to scrunch his face in contemplation. I admired his remarkable ability to stick with something and actually think about it deeply. He does the same thing in chess. When his coach challenges him with a complex puzzle. He'll literally sit there in silence for minutes trying to figure it out. We'll talk about that quality, what Tom Morris brilliantly describes as intellectual persistence in another plus one. For now, I asked Emerson again, so what do you think I'm thinking about as I plug in your charger? And he said that you love me. To which I said with tears, my eyes then and now. Exactly, buddy. I'm thinking about how much I love you when I do that. Then I think about how much I'll enjoy connecting with you when you come into my office. It's one of my absolute favorite things in the day. And I can feel the mutual micro moment of positivity resonance Barbara Fredrickson talks about in Love 2.0. Then I continued, I wonder if we could try to find ways to do tiny little nice things for mommy and Eleanor and each other every day. Me. What do you think? Him? Yes. And that's today's plus one. Me. I wonder if we could try to find ways to do tiny, little nice things for the people in our lives every day. What do you think? You. Day one. All in. Let's go.
