You Are Heroic with Brian Johnson

Latest Episodes:

PNTV - Self-theories Nov 25, 2015

Show notes

Carol Dweck is one of the world’s leading researchers on the science of motivation. This book is a collection of brief essays on various aspects of “self-theories.” It’s essentially a bridge between her extensive academic research studies and her popular book Mindset. It’s amazing. Big Ideas we explore include the two frameworks (entity vs. incremental) and their two goals (performance vs. learning), attributional retraining (aka learning the best way to respond to failure!), and moving from contingent self-worth to wholehearted self-esteem.

PNTV - Little Bets by Peter Sims Nov 23, 2015

Show notes

Little bets. Peter Sims tells us they’re a LOT wiser than bet-it-all-and-pray big bets. He shows us the wisdom of the little bets approach via fascinating stories highlighting the extraordinary success of everyone from Chris Rock mastering a performance to Pixar creating their ingenious films. Big Ideas we explore include how to build our growth mindset muscles, going from suck to unsuck, smallifying, creating small wins and doing things to discover things.

Micro Class - Your Hungry Brain Nov 22, 2015

Show notes

Your brain only weighs around 3 pounds. That's 2-3% of your total body weight. Yet... Your brain is hungry. It consumes 20-30% of your total caloric intake. So, eat wisely!

Micro Class: What's Wildly Important? Nov 21, 2015

Show notes

It's a LOT easier to get fired up to do something with a strong YES!! What's your WILDLY awesome goal that'll help you crowd out all the shallow distractions?

PNTV - Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland Nov 20, 2015

Show notes

Art and fear. (You may have noticed they go together.) This is a quick-reading (122 pages), witty, real look at the process and challenges of making art. Of course, I think the biggest art project all of us can ever engage in is the creation of our own optimized and actualized lives, so we’ll be focusing on Big Ideas we can apply to our lives today including: quitting vs. stopping, fast vs. slow, 50 lbs, the importance of progress, naive passion vs. informed passion and how to get work done like a PRO!

Interview: The Energy Project with Tony Schwartz Nov 19, 2015

Show notes

Tony Schwartz is the CEO and founder of The Energy Project, which helps companies fuel sustainable high performance by better meeting the needs of their employees. Drawing on the multidisciplinary science of sustainable high performance, Tony's abiding passion and lifelong commitment is to change the way the world works.

Interview: Steal Like an Artist with Austin Kleon Nov 18, 2015

Show notes

This is a great little book packed with gems on the creative process we can apply to both our work AND our lives. As per the sub-title, Austin gives us "10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative." Big Ideas we explore include the need to start copying, the importance of taking care of ourselves and establishing a routine as we set creative constraints and amassing a body of work as we consistently show up.

Interview: Show Your Work with Austin Kleon Nov 17, 2015

Show notes

This is Austin Kleon's second masterful little book on optimizing creativity. The first? Steal Like an Artist. After learning how to get our creativity on, we're ready to become the artist whose ideas *others* steal. Big Ideas include chain creating, micro sabbaticals, playing till the 9th inning, troll pooper scoopers, and the #1 way to get more followers.

PNTV - Bounce by Matthew Syed Nov 16, 2015

Show notes

What do you think about excellence? Do you think it’s primarily driven by natural, inborn talent? Or, do you think that it’s primarily driven by effort? Matthew Syed tells us that’s a very important decision that has a broad impact on how we show up and shows us how to Bounce into our highest potential. Big Ideas we explore include: the iceberg illusion, 1 million balls, doublethink and the importance of purposeful practice + the growth mindset.

Interview: Black Box Thinking with Matthew Syed Nov 15, 2015

Show notes

Failure. Some of us lean into it and learn as much as we can from it, and some of us prefer to avoid thinking about it and/or pretend it never happened. As you may guess, one approach leads to dramatically better performance over the long run. (Hint: Seeing failure as feedback + learning opportunities is a very wise idea.) Big Ideas we explore include a quick look at the aviation vs. health care industries, the importance of quantity of work if you want quality, marginal gains, cognitive dissonance and pre-mortems.