Brian Johnson records a short Heroic +1 podcast (episode #1,807) about a three-hour flight delay between Tampa and Austin. He frames delays as opportunities to practice resilience: asking "what's my ideal response?", imagining historical perspective (how the trip would take 250 years previously), reframing inconvenience as non-problematic, and converting downtime into productive micro-actions (walking, burpees, catching up on work). The episode encourages using small glitches to build 'antifragile' confidence and to habitually choose better responses to stimuli.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. I'm typing this from seat 6A on Southwest Airlines flight 480 that's departing in five minutes from Tampa en route to Austin. My morning was dominated. Got up after less sleep than normal with a soul 4 score of 101. Still buzzing from the SoCalm awards ceremony the night before. Skipped the normal AM meditation, saving it for the flight, and immediately started riding some Plus 1s, connected with the wifey and family and and then hammered a quick balcony burpee workout before getting in my Uber and arriving at the airport 90 minutes before the scheduled departure at 12:30. And the flight was delayed by three hours due to some weather issues. My response? Perfect. First of all, it really didn't matter to me whether I spent those three hours in the hotel or in the airport. And I kind of sort of love it when little things like this go wrong, as these little inconveniences are such a perfect opportunity to practice my philosophy and strengthen my ability to step in between an undesired stimulus and a negative response and choose my best response to the situation. I love doing this with the little things like this so I can do it with the big things that inevitably and unexpectedly show up in life when we better have gotten some reps so we have the capacity to step in between a really negative stimuli and a really negative response and use that challenge as an opportunity to forge some more antifragile confidence. Right? So after letting Alexander know I'd be a little late, I immediately asked myself, what's my ideal response here? Then I systematically worked through a little protocol that went something like this. First, as we discussed when I took another trip to Tampa, when I travel, I love to imagine taking the same trip 250 years ago. Now, this trip from Austin to Tampa is a thousand plus miles that would have taken me months to do 250 years ago. The three hours I'm gonna get delayed. Perfect. Then I reminded myself of what I already said. I really didn't care whether I was at the hotel or the airport. I'd be catching up on heroic biz stuff anyway, so that was a non. Then I figured I might as well get my 10,000 steps in by walking around outside the airport. So I found a great little courtyard where I could walk back and forth. It was hot and humid and I was basically all alone, so I decided to get a little vitamin D and some extra burpees. And as I hammered out a few more sets of burpees at 143 for the day after taking off the old heroic T shirt and getting that bonus micro workout in. And that's a very mundane example of how I use a little glitch to practice my philosophy, making it a game to see just how fast I could turn it around. Speed as a force style. Check out that +1 and use that micro obstacle as fuel for the antifragile forge. And that's today's one. If you feel so inspired the next time you face a little or a big glitch, see how fast you can step in between the stimulus and your old less than heroic response and choose the best possible response. Shirtless burpees are optional. Day one all in. Let's go.
