Why Not Everyone Will Succeed in Becoming the Best Version of Themselves

Hi, this is Brian with a quick message. Have you heard about heroic yet? It's the new social training platform we've been building with the same company that builds Slack and Tinder and Uber Eats. Short story, Heroic is all about helping you move from theory to practice to mastery so you can show up as the best, most heroic version of yourself, so we can change the world together, one person at a time, starting with you and. And me and us today. Well, technically, starting April 9th, that's when we're launching super excited. Learn more and watch a little video from me and join us as a founding member at Heroic Us Day one. Let's go. Hi, this is Brian. I'm the creator of Optimize and the founder and CEO of Heroic. And I'm thrilled to welcome you to our community. Everything we'll do together has a single purpose. Helping you to be the best, most heroic version of yourself so that we can change the world one person at a time, together. Starting with you and me and us today. On that note, I have a question for you. Are you showing up as the best, most heroic version of yourself? And if not, what? Why not? What's getting in the way? And most importantly, what are you waiting for? Now, most of us already know at some level what we could be doing to live our greatest lives. And if you don't feel like you know, you can get more wisdom in less time, for free, unoptimized by heroic, which you now have lifetime access to. Hundreds of thousands of people from every country in the world have signed up for Optimize, and I feel blessed to have received thousands and thousands of notes from our community telling me how much that wisdom has changed their lives. But of course, the reality is that not everyone is successful in becoming the best version of themselves, even with access to all the best wisdom in the world. Now, why is that? Well, the obvious truth is that you don't need to read another book or listen to another podcast or take another class. Learning what the great teachers have to say about how to live is obviously powerful. And I've spent half of the last 25 years reading hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books and distilling the best of ancient wisdom and modern science into the notes and classes you will find in Optimized by Heroic. But knowing the theory is only the first step. The most important next step is if you want to more consistently show up as the best, most heroic version of yourself. You need to move from theory to practice to mastery. Again, the theory is essential, and it all starts there. But then you need to put what you learn into practice. That's the only possible way you can fundamentally and permanently change your life. And show up as the best, most heroic version of yourself and go out and give us all you've got again. Not someday, but today. Because you know what? This isn't a dress rehearsal hero. If you haven't noticed, our world needs heroes today more than ever before. We're not just recovering from the effects of COVID 19. We have global pandemics of anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, social injustice, and environmental degradation. We are facing historically significant challenges, and these challenges aren't getting any better. These historically significant challenges are also historically significant opportunities to serve heroically. And the only possible way we're going to solve these challenges is if each of us shows up as that best, most heroic version of ourselves. To put it directly, we need to quit looking outside of ourselves for the heroes and who will change the world. The hero we've been waiting for, he or she is looking at you in the mirror. We need you to step up and start showing up more and more consistently again as that best, most heroic version of yourself. Not someday, but today. And this is precisely why I founded Heroic Public Benefit Corporation and why I'm so excited to launch our Heroic app on April 9th. To help us move from theory to. To practice to mastery so we can change the world together. It's also why I'm excited to invite you to our Heroic launch party workshop along with a bunch of other group trainings for our heroic founding members. In a few minutes, I'll share more with you about how Heroic helps you become the best version of yourself by integrating the absolute best of ancient wisdom, modern science, and practical tools so you can show up consistently and as that best version of yourself. More specifically, how in just three minutes a day, I promise you that we can fundamentally and permanently change your life and in the process, change the world together. I'll even demo some of the app for you. But before we get to that, have you seen the great documentary on the hero's journey called Finding Joe? Now I happen to be in it alongside Deepak Chopra, Robin Sharma, Sir Ken Robinson, and and some other great teachers. And fun fact, Pat Solomon, the director of Finding Joe, was actually inspired to make the film after reading my philosopher's notes on Joseph Campbell's work. He also just flew out to Austin to set up our heroic studio and is in fact filming this video right now with our crew in our studio. Pat, come on and say hi. Look at us. We're so lucky we got Pat. So what's up, brother? Yeah. Stoked to be here, man. Life is good. I sent out a bad signal. Pat needs you create a heroic studio for us. Took literally the next flight out on a plane that day. Yeah, I love you, man. Thanks for having me. And I'm super stoked to be a part of this. Day one. Let's go. Here we go. Fun little interlude. Now, in many ways, heroic is the operationalization of all the wisdom in that movie that Pat created, answering the question of how we can live a heroic life in the modern world. But we need to get really clear about one very important thing. I'm not the hero of this story. You are now. Every hero gets a guide. Harry Potter got Dumbledore. Luke got Yoda. Neo got Morpheus. I'm kinda like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings knocking on the door of your hobbit hole, encouraging you to go on your heroic quest, only I have a little less hair and don't have a beard. And you don't live in a hobbit hole. So I guess maybe that makes me more like Professor Xavier encouraging his X Men to show up and give the world all they've got. Either way, for the hero's journey to officially begin. The hero, and that would be you, needs to answer the call. If you don't, well, then things get a little more interesting, as Joseph Campbell says. And I'm actually the person who talks about this in the documentary. If you don't answer the call, then to put it very directly, you will suffer. Now why is that? Because at some point in your evolution, and you're at that point, if you're this far into this video, actualizing your potential and showing up as the best, most heroic version of yourself goes from a kind of sort of nice to have to. To a must have. Which is why the great psychologist Abraham Maslow tells us that what one can be, one must be. I love that phrase. In fact, if I was going to summarize my entire philosophy in a single sentence, that would probably be it. And by the way, if I was going to summarize my entire philosophy in a single word, that word would be the Greek word arete, which I now have tattooed on my body. So back to Maslow. In his hierarchy of needs, he describes this need to actualize your potential as a fundamental human need. He tells us that at some point in our lives, this need to express the best version of ourselves becomes just as real as our need to breathe. I like to think of it as soul oxygen. And if you're feeling like you're gasping for a little bit of soul meaning era in your life. Look at the gap between who you're capable of being right now and who you're actually being. And note this. All the great teachers echo this wisdom. If you study ancient wisdom and modern science, what you'll see is an astonishing coherence among all the wisdom traditions. They all say that the ultimate purpose of life is to express the best version of yourself in service to something bigger than yourself, to close that gap. And they all say that if there's a gap between who you're capable of being and who you're actually being in any given moment, then you will suffer. It's in that gap in which anxiety, depression, disillusionment exists. We need to close it. And if you don't, you will feel less energized, less productive, and less connected than you could feel and that you should feel. And that pain is actually a good thing as it points to what's missing in our lives. Jim Rohn puts it brilliantly. He tells us, and I quote, we will all experience one pain or the other, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. But the difference is that the pain of discipline, he says, weighs only ounces, while the pain of regret weighs tons. In other words, you can experience the subtle pain of closing the gap now by doing what you know you could and should be doing during those moments where you may currently be taking the easy way out and indulging in suboptimal behaviors. That pain of closing the gap is measured in ounces. Or you can choose to experience pain in the form of regret by getting to the end of your life and realizing you didn't do the little things you know you could have done day in and day out. Oops. You failed to fulfill your highest potential because you didn't flip the switch and move from theory to practice to mastery. Today, that pain that weighs tons. And we actually have an exercise in heroic to help you feel that pain now so you don't have to feel it at the end of your life. I call it a quick trip to hell. You can go there now. Imagine you're at the end of your life. You're literally on your deathbed. As you look at that version of yourself in your mind, you can tell that you didn't quite live up to the vision of who you knew you could have been. It's heartbreaking. Then it gets worse. Imagine the door to your room opening, and in walks the version of you you could have become. They're radiantly alive, confident, poised, clearly fulfilled in every sense. Now that version of you looks at the version of you on your deathbed that failed to actualize your potential and can only offer a consoling look. Then, boom, you're gone. Some would call that hell to meet the version of yourself that you could have become when it was too late to do anything about it. The good news? It's not too late to do something about it. I don't care where you are in your life, and I've been blessed to serve teenagers to elders. You can become that best version of yourself now. But very important, we need to have the wisdom and self mastery and courage and love to stop numbing ourselves from the pain in our lives. Whether that's with alcohol or Netflix binging or endless scrolling on Instagram or whatever you do to numb the pain. And we all do something in our less enlightened moments. And then we need to start showing up more powerfully so we can close that gap and experience the deep sense of joy and connection and fulfillment we all crave. So helping you close that gap between who you're capable of being and who you're actually being so you can become more energized, more productive and more connected than you've ever been in your life by moving from theory to practice to mastery is exactly what heroic is all about. And what I am so fiercely committed to, to helping you achieve. And that's exactly what that Greek word arete means. The one I have tattooed right there. Close the gap between who you're capable being and who you're actually being. Moment to moment to moment. When you do that in service of something greater than yourself, you become heroic. Which is the word I have tattooed on the other arm and what our entire mission and movement are all about. Arete Heroic. And here's the good news. The moment in which you decide to step up and show up as that best, most heroic version of yourself. It's like flipping the switch in a dark room. Suddenly that dark room, no matter how long it had been dark, is filled with light. Of course, in life we can't just flip the switch once and call it done. And all the self help books that promise that quick fix are part of the problem here. It's hard work to keep that light switch on. We need to show up day in and day out if we want to fundamentally and permanently change our lives. And again, helping you do that is the precise point of our heroic social training platform. All of which leads us to the most important part of our chat. How will Heroic help you close the gap and show up more powerfully? Let's start with an overview of the theory in basic training and then we'll chat about how we'll help you put that theory into practice every single day. So I've spent half of the last 25 years as a founder CEO building and selling two social platforms and the other half as a philosopher, reading, writing and teaching while creating all the wisdom you now have access to, along with hundreds of thousands of people from every country in the world. And after training over 10,000 people from over 115 countries as part of our 300 day heroic coach certification program, which has been scientifically proven to change lives, I've condensed the process of becoming your best self into the seven objectives of basic training, which is the first training program you get in the in the Heroic app as a founding member on April 9th. So the first thing we need to really get if we want to really change our lives is this. We're playing the wrong game. We've all heard the quip that A journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step. Of course that's true. And know this, if that first step is in the wrong direction, you'll be 2,000 miles away from where you wanted to be at at the end of that thousand mile journey in Objective 1 of basic training, we'll invite Aristotle and Martin Seligman, the founder of the Positive Psychology movement, to our party as proxies for ancient wisdom and modern science. We'll ask them, hey guys, what's the ultimate meaning of life? And they'll give us the exact same one word answer. And that answer can instantly change your life. And by the way, we'll ask them a follow up question on how we can play that ultimate game well. And they answer that question with the same one word answer as well. Aristotle's response is that one word summation of my entire life's work that I've tattooed my body with. So once we know the ultimate game and how to play it well, it's time to know rule number one of a good noble life. Here it is. It's not supposed to be easy when you truly answer the call to your own idiosyncratic heroic quest. And please do, you've got to know you're supposed to battle dragons. You're not sidestepping lizards here. It's not supposed to be easy. Now that may sound obvious, but we've been seduced to play the wrong game. And perhaps even worse, we've been seduced to think it's supposed to all be rainbows and sunshine and unicorns, then we think something's wrong with us when it isn't, inevitably isn't easy to create a good, noble life. Getting this fact is also life changing. But again, we need to move from getting it intellectually to doing the hard work to forge what I call antifragile confidence. Now, this is already way too long. So the abridged take here is simple. You can be fragile and break the moment life gets hard, or you can be resilient and withstand more pressure before you snap, but then bounce back quicker than most. Or, and this is an important or you can be the opposite of fragile. You can be antifragile. You can literally get stronger every time life knocks you around. And helping you forge that type of heroic strength is what basic training is all about. And there's only one way to build that level of confidence. You need to start more and more consistently doing all the little and big things you already know you could be doing. We're going to help you create a protocol by helping you identify what you do when you're at your best, then we're going to challenge you. And the practice side of the heroic app is architected to support support you in doing this. To show up and do those things you do when you're at your best, especially when you don't feel like it. The worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. That's how you forge antifragile confidence. It's as close to invincibility as we can get. So we know the game we're playing and how to play it well, we're forging antifragile confidence. And as we use all of life's challenges as fuel for our growth, now it's time to simplify personal growth. It's time to focus on what we call the heroic big three. Energy, work, and love. Now, I don't agree with Sigmund Freud on much, but when I first read a line from him that the good life can be boiled down to doing two things well, a choir of angels sang the two things, work and love. Get those right and you're at least 80% there. But if your energy is terrible and you have a hard time getting out of bed because of poor lifestyle choices, then there's no way we're going to show up powerfully in either our work or our love. Therefore, we'd be wise to start by getting our energy to heroic levels, by dominating our fundamentals, which is objective Six. Then we bring that new level of heroic vitality to our work and to our love. And voila. We're more energized and more productive and more connected than ever as we more consistently show up as the best, most heroic versions of ourselves. And echo, if enough of us do that together, we can literally change the world together. When, my dear hero, do you think it would be wise to actually apply all these ideas to our lives today? Of course. The entire app is architected with this simple but profound truth. In New Year's resolutions are warm and fuzzy. New Day's resolutions are where it's at. We need to move from theory to practice to mastery today. Yes, that's astonishingly obvious. It's equally life changing when practiced. When we get this right, we'll still have highs and lows because of course, we're human and no one's perfect. And our highs will be higher and our lows will be higher. And that's awesome. Now, with that strong foundation, it's time to go to the next level with our self mastery, which is objective five. Then we'll dominate our fundamentals. Objective six. En route to activating our heroic superpower, your soul force, which is objective 7. You want self mastery? Then I'll encourage you to consider cultivating three distinct forms of discipline. Structural discipline, reactive discipline, and expansive discipline. Here's the quick take. Structural discipline is the consistency with which we show up and work our protocol. The worse we feel, the more committed we are to doing the things we know are best for us. That's structural discipline. Reactive discipline is the consistency with which we show up and step in between a challenging stimulus in our lives and choose the most empowered response. As Viktor Frankl says, in between a stimulus and your response, there is a gap. Our freedom exists right in that gap. Cultivating that response. Ability is the essence of reactive discipline. Expansive discipline is the consistency with which we approach life's challenges rather than try to avoid them. We need to know that our infinite potential exists outside of our comfort zone and that every time we feel uncomfortable, we are being given an invitation to expand into the next best, most heroic version of ourselves. This is the essence of courage, which is the willingness to act in the presence of fear. And just another word for expansive discipline. Now, you want to see how tall a building is going to be? Look at how deeply they're digging the foundation. Same thing with our lives. You want to create a truly great, noble life. Dominate your fundamentals. We have seven fundamentals that we'll cover in basic Eating, moving, sleeping, Breathing, focusing, celebrating and prospering. Dominate these and you'll have all the heroic energy you need for your work and for your love. And all of that leads us to one place. It's time to activate your heroic superpower. We call it Soul Force. All of your favorite heroes had it, and of course, so do you. We just need to know how to flip the switch and activate it moment to moment to moment. Now that's a quick look at the seven objectives of Heroic basic training, which forms the foundation of the theory part of our heroic app, which we'll be launching in April. Now we're ready to move on to the actual practice. There are two parts, all grounded in the absolute best of behavioral science to help us fundamentally and permanently change our lives. The heart of our practice in the heroic training platform is our two steps, commit and hit big three protocol. It all starts with our 1 minute AM commitment process in which we recommit to showing up as our best selves in our energy, our work and our love. As I like to say, New Year's resolutions are nice. New Day's resolutions are much more powerful if we're serious about actualizing our potential. So what are your heroic identities? Who are you at your best most heroic? Self, energy, work and love wise? How does that best, most heroic version of yourself show up? What are the virtues you embody and what are the top three target behaviors that you're going to do today to live in alignment with that best, most heroic version of yourself? Again, energy, work and love wise? Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Right in the app. Boom. In one minute, we've set our intention for the day and we're ready to rock. That's part one. Part two, it's time to actually hit those targets we set for ourselves. And I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to be personally using the app and setting those targets and hitting them all day, every day. It's literally already changed my life. Now Metalab worked with Tinder and help them develop that swipe left, swipe right thing. The moment I learned that, I knew that they'd help us create our equivalent swipe to hit virtuous targets, giving us a splash of dopamine every single time we do what is best for us, using the absolute best of persuasive behavioral design to help us show up as the absolute best version of ourselves. Now we had the best motion graphics designer at Metalab, which makes him, in my opinion, at least tied for first as the best motion graphics designer in the world design this swipe effect. As you swipe and pull back to the left, you'll feel a haptic tension. Kind of like Angry Birds, only rather than a slingshot, it will be for a bow. Then you'll release and boom. Another virtuous target hit. Now. 30,000 heroes hitting 10 virtuous targets a day equals 100 million virtuous targets hit a year. 300,000 heroes hitting 10 virtuous targets is a billion virtuous targets a year. 300 million heroes hitting 10 virtuous targets. That's a trillion virtuous targets hit a year. And that's how we'll help you flourish. One virtuous act at a time. And that's how we'll change the world together. One person and one virtuous act at a time. And that's a somewhat quick look at the seven objectives of Heroic Basic Training and how we'll help you move from theory to practice to mastery every single day with the Heroic Daily Commit and Hit process. And again, that's how we'll change the world. One person in virtuous act at a time together. Starting with you and me and us today, technically April 9th. And we'd love to welcome you to our Heroic movement as a founding member of our social training platform. As a Heroic founding member, you'll get 50% off our social training platform forever. Along with a free ticket to our launch party. When Heroic launches on April 9, it will be 70 bucks a year. But when you sign up today, you can become a heroic founding member for only $35 a year forever. And if that wasn't enough to get you excited, we'll also be doing a few live coaching sessions between now and launch that are exclusively for founding members. All leading up to our epic full day Heroic Launch party workshop on April 9th in Austin. Which will start with a workshop from me on how to be the best most heroic version of yourself. Followed by by a live performance by my all time favorite band, the Score. It's gonna be awesome. Hundreds of our Heroic founding investors will be there live with us in Austin and you can livestream it for free. As a Heroic founding member again, I think it's gonna be pretty awesome and we'd love to have you there. So to recap, join today as one of our very first Heroic founding members and lock in 50% off forever. You'll be getting in at the ground level and get Heroic at the lowest price it will ever be offered while joining as part of our core group of heroes who are co creating the app with us and showing up every day putting their theory into practice. You'll also be part of everything we are rolling out with Heroic in the next year as a core group who is leading by example in training right there alongside us. You'll also get to join us for that Heroic Launch Paul Workshop via Livestream for free as well as those live coaching sessions between now and launch. And most importantly, if I do my job and we do great work together, we'll step up and show up as the best, most heroic version of ourselves so we can change the world together one person at a time. Starting with you and me and all of us today. All that to say with love, wisdom, self mastery and courage. I say heroes unite. Hi, this is Brian again. I hope you enjoyed getting a little more wisdom in less time. If you want to take what you just learned and move from theory to practice to mastery so you can become the best, most heroic version of yourself in just three minutes a day, head to Heroic Us and watch the short video to learn more about heroic. As always, let's change the world one person at a time together starting with you and me and us today.