Brian Johnson discusses recovery time with his long-time coach Phil Stutz: how quickly you regain your footing after a setback or mistake. Johnson has met with Stutz 451 times over seven years and treats recovery speed as a skill you can improve, like a game with a mental stopwatch.
Questions this episode answers
Nearly 451 sessions.
Every Tuesday at 1:40pm Central Time.
1500+ pages of notes.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. As you know, if you've been even remotely following along, Phil Stutts is my coach, honorary spiritual father and heroic Yoda. Phil and I have connected one on one nearly 451 times over the last seven plus years. No other person has had a deeper impact on me and my thinking than Phil Stutz. Now these days, Phil and I connect every Tuesday at 1:40pm Central Time. During each session I take five to 10 pages of handwritten notes, quickly capturing the most powerful ideas so I can add them to my collection of 1500 plus pages of notes. Now, as part of my AM protocol, every morning between our coaching sessions, I spend a few minutes reviewing my notes from my prior session. And that's what I was doing 60 seconds before I grabbed my Mac, opened a paper document and started creating this plus one. I was on page four of my notes from my session yesterday when I realized I needed to capture some of the wisdom from our chat. In one of these plus ones for curious souls on page one, I always write Phil Studs in the date, time, day in the upper left hand corner of my blank piece of paper. In this case it was 227-241-40pm Central Tuesday. Then on the upper right, I write down the themes I want to explore. In this case, I was excited to reflect on my trip to serve Captain Dave Pollard and the warriors who lead the USS George H.W. bush from the week before, along with some exciting opportunities with elite sports teams, along with the dynamic creative challenges of leading our Public benefit corporation. So we talked about the essence of great leadership. Page two, the importance of never deviating from my commitment to Arete on page three. And then we got to what I want to talk about today. Phil was reflecting on the work we've done over the years, and he complimented me on the speed with which I've integrated the ideas we've been exploring and told me that my recovery time was insanely fast. And that's what I want to talk about today. As we discussed way back in the day, C1 number 502 on collecting turnarounds, Phil likes to call those moments when we get knocked off center by life's inevitable pain, uncertainty and hard work glitches. Something challenging happens. We allow a gap to creep in between who we could have been in response to that glitch and who we actually were. Oops. That of course happens often. The question is, what do you do when it happens? And more importantly, how fast can you recover? Phil says that turning those glitches around as we regain our equanimity by recommitting to living with Arete and then doing what needs to be done to close the gap and express the best version of ourselves is, and I quote, the most creative act in the universe. Know this. We want to get really, really, really good at that. As we've discussed, Marcus Aurelius talked about the same thing. He says, and I quote him, when force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self control and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it. I like to call that the Equanimity game. Check out a plus one on that. Back in the day Now Michael Gelb talks about the great martial arts and spiritual arts master Morge Usheba and how he embodied these ideas. Uesheba was the founder of Aikido. Apparently once upon a time, one of his students told him, your techniques are perfect. You never make any mistakes. You never lose your center. To which O Sensei replied, I lose my center frequently. I just find it again so quickly that you can't see it. Now that's what we're talking about. And that's today's plus one. When you hit your inevitable glitches today, remember Yoda Stutz, Marcus Aurelius, and more. Hey Usheva, make it a game. Bust out a stopwatch in your mind. See how fast you can recover. Close the gap. Live with rte, moment to moment to moment, all day, every day, especially today.
