Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

You Have to Enter the Fog

11 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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In this motivational monologue, Brian Johnson urges listeners to reinvent themselves whenever they encounter pivotal moments he calls “cliffs,” which can arise after either a major success or a failure. He references Jim Collins’s recent book, highlighting Collins’s research on how extraordinary individuals navigate these cliffs by confronting the uncertainty he terms “the fog.” Johnson emphasizes the need to dream big again, devise a new game plan, and identify the next best version of oneself once the familiar certainty disappears.

Chapters

There are times in your life when you got to reinvent yourself. You got to figure out who the next best version of you is going to be. You got to dream big again. You got to create a new game plan. In the note, I talk about Jim Collins's new book, phenomenal book. He is the greatest living business strategist who spent 10 years of his life studying individuals and their path to creating extraordinary lives. And he talks about the fact that every single one of us is going to go through moments where we reach a cliff, and it may be after a failure or it might be after a huge success. And when we get to that cliff, we enter what he calls a Or the certainty we had before we hit that cliff is no longer there. You go to that cliff, you enter the fog, and you need to figure out what your next step is.