17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson describes a Toronto FC viewing ritual and shares a story about a player watching his own highlight videos during a slump. Mining past successes and revisiting them builds confidence and makes deposits into what Johnson calls a psychological bank account.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last plus one, we continued our discussion of how to make deposits into our psychological bank accounts to forge the intense trust in ourselves to know we have what it takes to show up as our best when it matters most. We had some fun with Emerson and his top 10 hero bars and I encouraged you to have fun doing the same with a little loved one as well. Quick check in. You do the hard work on yourself to forge the strength for two and get the bonus points. Good answer. Awesome. Now, as we wrap up this whole conversation around heroic journaling, I need to take one more related tangent on how to cook some past hero bar memories so we can use them as fuel for our current challenges. Quick context. The kids and I have a new family ritual. On Saturday evenings. We've been turning on the computer, logging into Apple TV and watching our favorite team, Toronto fc play a Major League Soccer game. Note Alexander and I have been together for 17 years and we have never had a TV and I haven't had one in over 20 years. So we use the computer. So the computer is on Emerson sitting next to me. Eleanor's on my lap wearing the Toronto FC game day jersey I got when Michael and I went out to work with the team and the team behind the team. And we we're watching the pre game show before the match begins. Now, if I was a true soccer fan and this will be like the fourth professional soccer game I've ever watched, so I'm not, I'd probably know who the announcers are. As it is, I have no idea who they are, but we're enjoying their overview of that day's matches and all that. Now, one of the announcer guys asked the other guy, so and so players in a swamp, what did you do when you hit a rough spot? You were in a swamp? The former player guy says, well, it may sound really weird, but LeBron James just said that he does this as well. So I'll tell you, when I was in a slump, I'd literally watch highlights of myself on video. And he said it almost sheepishly, like he was embarrassed about it. And the other commentators are like, really? You did that? And he's like, yeah, it helped. And I'm like, why is this guy apologizing for doing what all the greats do in one way or another? And why are the other people acting so surprised he did it? This, my dear hero, is the Confident Mind 101. We must mine our past for our best moments, then feast on those memories as we make some more deposits into our confidence building psychological bank account today.
