You Are Heroic with Brian Johnson

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+1: Happy the Rooster (#1298) Oct 10, 2022

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Alchemizing Bread Crumbs, Dishes and Legos Alexandra just walked into my office to tell me that she thinks our rooster, Happy, is dying. Before we talk more about that… Yes, our rooster's name is Happy. Emerson and Eleanor are phenomenal pet namers. We have Happy the Rooster, Lovey and Floppy and Spikey and Longbeak and Goldie the chickens. Then there's Zap—the dog that showed up on our property one New Year's Day a couple of years ago and adopted us. And don't forget Wags, another awesome dog who decided he wanted to move in one day as well. Now… If you've ever listened to one of my Zoom calls, you've probably heard a rooster in the background. Sometimes, I have to admit, I find his crow charming while other times I find it distracting—whether it's on a Zoom or in my morning meditation when he's doing his thing RIGHT outside my office window. But… This rooster is truly an awesome rooster. We hatched him ourselves and he does his job protecting his hens Heroically well and he's not an ornery guy like his dad rooster was. So… When Alexandra came in and told me she thinks he's dying (while she does her country-nurse thing with him to try to save him!), I felt a deeper sense of sadness than I've felt when we've lost some other chickens and found other dead creatures on the property. I always use those moments as another Stoic reminder of Memento Mori but this one hit me deeper. I really like this guy!! Then I thought of a story Alexandra shared once. It was about bread crumbs. I forget the relationship book from which she got the wisdom but the basic idea was this… In a significant long-term relationship with ANYONE (let alone a spouse or kids) there will INEVITABLY be things about that person that annoy you. Maybe they leave bread crumbs on the counter (which irritated the author of the book who told the story) or maybe they leave the dishes out or maybe they leave their Legos all over the house if they're kids (which, in his less-than-enlightened moments can irritate the author of this +1 ). Or maybe they do any number of things people do because they're human and none of us are perfect. It's easy to find those little things annoying. And… What if… One day… Those breadcrumbs or dishes or Legos or whatever weren't there because that loved one was no longer there? All of a sudden we'd MISS those breadcrumbs or dishes or Legos or whatever. That's what I thought of when I heard Happy might not make it. He hasn't been crowing for the last several days because he hasn't been feeling great. I already miss him. And I want to make sure I don't let those little things my kids and wife and others do that I might find annoying distract me from the fact that their presence in my life—with ALL the imperfections—is a profound GIFT. In fact, what I try to do these days is use those VERY things I used to find annoying as THE TRIGGER for me to appreciate just how blessed I am. I hope our rooster makes it so I can remind myself of this wisdom every time I hear him crow. Cock-a-doodle-do!!! Day 1. Let's go.

+1: The Game of Life (#1297) Oct 09, 2022

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And… How to Make Yours Heroic In the last few +1s, we spent some time talking about how to win the game of life by focusing on WHAT'S IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW. I'd like to continue that discussion. And, this time, I'd like to invite my friend Sean Casey back to the party so he can share HIS insanely (!) inspiring take on the subject. Quick context. As we've discussed, Sean was voted the friendliest guy in baseball. They nicknamed him "The Mayor." He's now part of Major League Baseball's Emmy-winning show MLB Tonight. He also has his own podcast. It's appropriately called "The Mayor's Office." Recently, he had a guy on his show who was also a fan of Heroic. They had a little chat about the app. And… Sean WENT OFF about how the app has changed his life. It's probably the best overview of the app (especially for sports fans!) I've ever seen. It's so good that I want to share it here now. So, let's head to The Mayor's Office for a special field trip. I'll see you in less than two minutes!! !!! If that doesn't fire you up, I don't know what will!! Haha!! That's Today's +1. Here's to making the game of life Heroically fun!! As always… Not someday… TODAY. P.S. Here's the transcript from that segment above! !! I look at it this way, and Brian Johnson talks about this. If you, me and Chinch went out and played baseball right now, and we were on this open field and I pitch to Tim, Tim crushes one, Chinch goes and runs and gets it. We come back. We're like, "yeah, this is fun!"

Well, that's not as much fun as if we take the foul lines and we run 'em down each line and we put foul poles up. We put a 330' sign in the corner, 385', 410'. We put a fence up that says, if you hit it over this fence, you get one point. If guys are on base, you get three, four, you know, 2, 3, 4 points.

This guy, we're gonna put a mound up with a rubber. It's gonna be 60 feet, six inches away because that seems fair. You're gonna throw it to me. We're gonna compete. We're gonna get after it.

Holy [edited]. Here we go. This is a ton of [edited] fun. Right?

I think of that as Heroic.

Heroic is my foul lines…

It's my game! It's my game of life.

So I line up, what are my routines? What are my habits? What am I gonna do to win my morning? What am I gonna do at night to get better sleep? What time do I need to get upstairs? What book am I gonna read? How am I gonna serve my kids today? How am I gonna serve my buddies today?

And all of a sudden at the end of the day I go, man, that was a great game today. Holy [edited].

You know what I mean? It's like, you start creating your own game because you've created the boundaries and that Heroic app…when you're shooting that arrow into your targets, it's a dopamine. It's just like, man, this is so freaking awesome.

And all of a sudden you start to realize, wow, you've created some habits and routines that is giving you the life that you've always wanted. Let's go, let's go.

+1: Action: Yet Again (#1296) Oct 08, 2022

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Gandhi, the Gita, Bagger Vance, and YOU In our last couple +1s, we've had fun hanging out with some world-class peak performance coaches: Harvey Dorfman and Phil Stutz. What did they teach us? They tell us that it's ALL ABOUT focusing on the PROCESS of TAKING ACTION rather than the unhealthy obsession on the OUTCOMES. They, of course, are not alone in this perspective. We talk about it in one of my all-time favorite +1s called "Did I Win? How to Sink a $1m Putt and Do Other Great Things." Short story: Lanny Bassham worked with a golfer who hadn't won in a while. Lanny told him to not even think about winning a tournament. Instead, they developed a protocol. His job was to EXECUTE that protocol every shot of every round he played. Fast forward a few tournaments. It's the final shot on the final hole on the final day of the tournament. Our golfer steps up, executes his protocol and makes the putt. Then his wife runs onto the green and leaps into his arms. His response? "Did I win?" I just got goosebumps typing that out. I've told that story COUNTLESS times. And it gets me EVERY SINGLE TIME. Imagine stepping up for a $1 million dollar putt and being SO FOCUSED on the PROCESS that you're OBLIVIOUS to the OUTCOME. Boom. That's how it's done. Then there's Gandhi. He tells us the same thing in his own words. In Eknath Easwaran's FANTASTIC biography Gandhi the Man (check out those Notes!), we learn that Gandhi liked to say: "The goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory." BOOM. That's how it's done. Where'd Gandhi get that wisdom? From his bible, the Bhagavad Gita (check out those Notes!) where we learn the fact that: "The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results." I could go on and on and on. I'll leave it at that for now. Actually… Let's bring it back to the 21st century and hear how Steven Pressfield puts it in The War of Art (check out THOSE Notes as well!). He tells us: "The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like." btw: Pressfield actually wrote a book on the subject that became a movie starring Will Smith and Matt Damon. Ever heard of The Legend of Bagger Vance? Did you know that that movie is basically the Bhagavad Gita on a golf course? Yep. In the Gita, a wise god (Krishna) advises a reluctant warrior (Arjuna). In The Legend of Bagger Vance, a wise caddy (Bagger Vance) advises a reluctant golfer (Rannulph Junuh). "Bagger Vance" <--> "Bhagavad Gita." Get it? So… Quick check-in… What do YOU want in your life? More Energy? More Productivity? More Connection? Awesome. What can you do RIGHT NOW (!) to take ONE STEP toward to achieving it? Get on that. Release attachment to outcomes. Repeat. All day. Every day. ESPECIALLY… TODAY. +1. +1. +1.

+1: Dorfman and Stutz (#1295) Oct 07, 2022

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On Action, Action, and More Action In our last +1, we hung out with one of the friendliest guys in baseball (The Mayor Sean Casey!) and his legendary coach Harvey Dorfman. I want to spend a little more time with Sean and bring another legendary coach to the party—MY coach, Phil Stutz. It's funny because when Sean told me the story shout how Harvey RUTHLESSLY focused on the process goals NOT the outcome goals, I immediately thought of Phil. As we've discussed, Phil says the same thing in his own way. He says that most people focus on the OUTCOMES in their lives when they should be focused on the ACTION they are taking in pursuit of their desired outcomes. The way he frames it is to imagine pearls. You can spend all your time COUNTING how many pearls you have (or don't have!)… Or… You can ignore the counting and simply focus on STRINGING THE NEXT PEARL. Over and over and over again we focus on what needs to get done right now. What's important RIGHT NOW? Do it. String the next pearl. Over and over and over and over again. You do that enough time and you know what happens? You get a LOT more of the outcomes you've been wanting. And… Somewhere along the way you learn that the REAL prize is knowing how to flip the switch and get into action—showing up as the best, most Heroic version of yourself. Not someday… Today. Let's do that. +1. +1. +1. Let's go! P.S. I love pearls. I have one on my desk at all times to remind me of the wisdom from this +1 on How to Make a Pearl and this wisdom from this +1 on The Pearl in My Pocket.

+1: Go 0 for 12 Lately? (#1294) Oct 06, 2022

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Who Cares? Work Your Protocol, Hero! One of my new dear friends is a guy named Sean Casey. Sean is a former Major League Baseball player. He was an All-Star who played first base. They called him "The Mayor" because he chatted up EVERYONE who made it to first base. He was SUCH a nice guy that Sports Illustrated declared him the friendliest guy in baseball. I met Sean through a mutual friend named Brian Cain who happens to be a longtime student of mine AND one of the world's best mental toughness coaches. We'll talk more about Cainer and his wisdom soon. For now, I want to talk about a story Sean told me about his playing days. It goes something like this… Once upon a time, while playing with the Cincinnati Reds, Sean was having an insanely great season. It was summer time and he was batting near .400—which, if you know anything about baseball, you know is an insanely hard thing to do. Then… Sean went 0 for 12. Now, going 0 for 12 is never a good thing for a professional baseball player but going 0 for 12 after starting the season THAT strongly is especially painful. So… Sean called a guy named Harvey Dorfman. Harvey was that era's greatest mental toughness coach. Btw: Check out our Notes on his GREAT book called Coaching the Mental Game AND check out our full collection of Notes on a TON of mental toughness books—which, for the record, is probably my favorite category on Heroic! Now… Sean tells Harvey that he's struggling. "I'm 0 for 12, Coach!!" Harvey doesn't care about those stats. All he wants to know is if Sean is executing the protocol they committed to. Sean tells him, "Yes! Of course. I'm doing exactly what we've talked about. I'm hitting the ball hard. And guys are just making great plays." Dorfman listens a little longer then he says something along the lines of (perhaps with a little profanity !): "Why in the HECK are you calling me?! We have nothing to talk about. Quit looking at the results and keep on dominating your protocol." Click. Call over. Haha. Of course, that story has nothing to do about Sean or baseball or batting .400. It's all about YOU. Are YOU going through a rough patch? Not feeling very energized or productive or connected? PERFECT. I love ya ( ) and… Ultimately, I don't care about those things. What I do care about is this: Are you working your protocol? Do you know who you are at your best in your Energy, your Work and your Love? Are you recommitting to being that best version of yourself every morning? Do you know what virtues that best version of you embodies? Are you recommitting to showing up with those virtues every morning? Do you know what specific things you DO when you're most on fire? Are you recommitting to those things every morning and then ACTUALLY DOING those things every day? Yes. I get it. Life can be incredibly challenging. AND… Love ya ( ) but… Life doesn't need to be THAT hard. And the process of showing up as your best self is DEFINITELY not THAT complicated or THAT hard. It all comes down to this: Know who you are and what you do when you're at your best. Then recommit to being that version of yourself and doing those things you do when you're on. Every. Single. Day. Not someday. And definitely not only on the days when you really feel like it. TODAY. That's the only way to move from theory to practice to mastery so we can change the world together. Day 1. All in. Let's go, Hero!!

+1: Heroic Meditation (#1293) Oct 05, 2022

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Breath + Heroes + Virtues + Stillness + Quest In our last +1, we talked about my new Heroic Mantra Meditation practice. Our one-word mantra? Areté. On the inhale… Areté. Areté. Areté. On the exhale. Areté. Areté. Areté. Repeat. I actually came up with that idea while rowing. I paused the workout on my ol' Suunto watch, went into the house, grabbed my batphone (that I use for offline/deep work mode stuff like this), and wrote that +1. Then I got back to my workout. And started repeating my mantra. ARETE. ARETE. ARETE. Today I want to chat about my Heroic Meditation practice. Nearly every day in the 18+ months after I founded Heroic, I meditated for an hour every morning. The connection I felt with my daimon and our Heroic vision has been GREATLY enhanced from the practice. Here's the Heroic meditation I created. You can make it work in as little as 3 minutes. With VERY rare exceptions, I meditate at the same time every morning: right after I get up. I repeat: Reduce the variability of your behavior to create sustainable habit change! I start each session with breathwork. Then I invite a few of my top heroes to join me and share some wisdom for the day. Then I walk through our virtue compass in my mind. Then I reconnect to our Heroic vision. Then I go dominate the day. Let's start with the breathwork. Actually, let's start with our posture. As we discussed in Meditation 101 and our Notes on Jon Kabat-Zinn's great book Wherever You Go, There You Are, the fastest way to find the right posture is to sit with dignity. Chest up. Chin down. Pull a thread through your head. You're poised yet relaxed. In a word: You are sitting with DIGNITY. Like royalty. That's a brilliant way to invite the best, most Heroic and noble version of yourself to the party. Then we take a nice, deep, quiet, relaxing breath. In through our nose. Down into our bellies. Back out through our nose. Slightly longer exhale than inhale. That's the fastest way to flip the switch on our parasympathetic nervous system, get out of fight-or-flight and connect to our daimons. I practice a version of that breath for a minute or three or eleven, depending on the length of my meditation. Then I invite my heroes to join me. I have Heroic portraits of 22 of my favorite heroes on my wall. On one wall I have large portraits of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Steve Jobs, Joseph Campbell, and Phil Stutz. And… I have a Heroic portrait of ME—to remind me to try to live up to the best within me. On another wall I have slightly smaller portraits. Five columns with three heroes in each column, representing different wisdom traditions and qualities I aspire to embody. On the far left, I have Jesus, Saint Ignatius, and Mother Teresa—representing my Catholic upbringing and a commitment to Love and embracing the universal truths of ALL faith traditions. Then I have Confucius, Epictetus (again!), and John Wooden—representing my commitment to a disciplined approach to life and the moral charisma that emanates from that integrity. Then I have Aristotle, Viktor Frankl, and Abraham Maslow—representing the integration of ancient wisdom and modern science in the form of three intellectual/philosophical heroes of mine. Then I have Alexander the Great, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr—representing leaders who embodied Soul Force in their own idiosyncratic, iconoclastic way: Alexander conquered the impossible in the material world while Gandhi conquered the impossible in the spiritual (and material!) world. Then I have Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Dwight D Eisenhower—representing Heroic war-time leaders as symbols for the internal war between vice and virtue we each must mindfully wage every day. I ask a few (or all!) of them for a pithy piece of wisdom for that day. Emerson tells me to trust myself. And he reminds me to always (always always!) do the thing I'm afraid to do. Epictetus tells me to practice my philosophy and to make The Choice of Hercules—not someday but TODAY. Aurelius tells me to play my role well and to remember The Inner Citadel. Jobs tells me to create something insanely great. Campbell tells me that we train heroes and reminds me that the demon you can swallow gives you its power. Phil tells me to conquer the impossible and reminds me that Speed Is a Force. I have connected with those heroes of mine so many times that I can literally hear their voices in my head as I created this +1. Every morning I commit to living in integrity with their wisdom and their example. It's hard to put into words how much I believe this practice has changed my life. The questions for you are… Who are YOUR heroes? What wisdom would they like to share with you? Would you be a better human being if you consistently reflected on and acted in integrity with those questions and answers? Now… After a quick trip through my heroes—which can take as little as a minute or as long as 11—I reflect on the core virtues of our virtue compass. Wisdom. Self-Mastery. Courage. Love. Hope. Gratitude. Curiosity. Zest. The first set includes the four cardinal virtues of every major ancient wisdom tradition. The second set includes the virtues modern science says are most highly correlated with our flourishing. After silently saying each virtue, I go through the declaration for each virtue. Wisdom. I know the ultimate game and how to play it well. Self-Mastery. I have structural, reactive, and expansive discipline. Courage. I am willing to act in the presence of fear. Love. I am joyful, grateful, and encouraging. Hope. I have an inspiring goal, agency, and pathways. Gratitude. I appreciate all the blessings in my life. Curiosity. I pay attention to what's working and what needs work. Zest. I dominate my fundamentals so I have Heroic energy. I can zip through that in a minute or three or take my time and imagine each for eleven minutes. Then I quiet my mind. And enjoy the silence. That can last from a minute to thirty minutes. Finally, I imagine a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051. I see my Soul Force at 101 and commit to doing everything I can to help YOU get YOUR Soul Force to 101. Then I imagine 1M of us getting our Soul Force to 101 so we can fulfill our mission and change the world, one person at a time, together, starting with you and me. TODAY.

+1: A (Single-Word) Mantra for Your Meditation (#1292) Oct 04, 2022

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Here It Is… This morning a friend of mine (thank you, Jon!) sent me a link to an article on Ray Dal i o's meditation practice. As you know if you've been following along, I'm a big fan of Dalio and his wisdom. We've featured Notes on his great book Principles and the kids and I enjoyed his kids book as well. We've also chatted about his 5-step process for success (note: Step 2 is FAILURE!!) as part of our "win or learn" and "learning is winning" so "win or win!" philosophy. But… It wasn't until this morning that I learned about Dalio's meditation practice. He says it's his secret weapon. His approach? Transcendental meditation. Otherwise known as TM. The key features of that approach include two, twenty-minute meditation sessions. Dalio does his first session after waking up and his second before dinner. Note: He reduces the variability of his behavior to increase the likelihood of making the habit stick which—as you know if you've gone through Basic Training and/or the Mastery Series and/or Habits 101–is a scientifically proven way to master yourself. Another key feature of TM? A mantra. With Transcendental Meditation, you get your mantra from your TM teacher. You're not supposed to share it publicly. But it's something kinda like "om." You come back to that mantra again and again and again. It's the anchor (see Meditation 101 and our collection of Notes and +1s on Meditation) that helps still your mind so you can connect to something bigger than yourself while experiencing all the other proven physiological and psychological benefits of meditation. Now… I've studied TM—and actually learned in the same room Maharishi Mahesh Yogi meditated in as I was blessed to be trained by one of his top students and teachers. I've also studied Vipassana. We chat about my experience with Vipassana in our Notes in As a Man Thinketh. We also chat about Vipassana in our Notes on Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Harari is one of my favorite writers. The lucidity of his writing is EXTRAORDINARY. Did you know he's been practicing Vipassana and meditating for TWO hours a day for DECADES? It's true. I've also practiced something called "Passage Meditation" developed by Eknath Easwaran (see those Notes) and the style taught by Nichiren Buddhism (see these Notes), and, well, a bunch of other approaches. I've also developed my own Heroic Meditation we'll talk more about soon. But… Today I want to share the new mantra meditation I'm going to start practicing as a little experiment. A single word. Can you guess what I'm choosing? … Hint: It's tattooed on my right forearm. The one-word summation of my life philosophy and ultimate target. … Areté. That's the new mantra. Areté. Areté. Areté. On the Inhale… Areté. Areté. Areté. On the Exhale… Areté. Areté. Areté. Let's close the gap between who we're capable of being and who we're actually being. Not someday. Not even some moment. Right now. And… Here's to soaking our consciousness in that ultimate target one breath at a time. +1 Areté. +1 Areté. +1 Areté. All day. Every day. Especially TODAY.

+1: Soul Force: An Origin Story (#1291) Oct 03, 2022

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Gandhi's Great Soul (+ Yours!) In our last +1, we talked about the fact that YOU are my all-time favorite hero. (It's true.) We also talked about the fact that, although every hero expresses it in different ways, EVERY (!) hero has the SAME superpower. We named it… SOUL FORCE Today I want to share a quick origin story on where I came up with that phrase. But, first… In case you're wondering if you qualify to even aspire to be a "hero," I have another question for you… Do you happen to know what the word hero means? As you may have heard me say before (and I promise I'll say it again!)… It's an ancient Greek word. Etymologically, the word hero doesn't mean "killer of bad guys" or "tough guy" or anything like that it. It means "PROTECTOR." A hero has strength for two. And, very importantly, a hero is willing to do the HARD work to HAVE that strength for two. And, do you know what the secret weapon of the ancient hero was? LOVE. It's LOVE that fuels our commitment to DO that hard work to HAVE the strength for two. It's LOVE that gives us the Courage to be willing to act in the presence of fear. It's LOVE that gives us the Self-Mastery to do what needs to get done whether we feel like it or not. And… 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 pandemic levels of anxiety and depression and cancer and diabetes and political polarization and social injustice and environmental degradation. And the ONLY possible way we are going to meet those *historically significant* challenges and create a more noble and virtuous world for ourselves and for our kids and for their kids is if each of us steps up and starts showing up as the best, most Heroic versions of ourselves. So… Back to your Soul Force. It's your superpower. And… Activating this superpower is the whole point of EVERYTHING we do together. As in… E V E R Y T H I N G!!! Activating your Soul Force is the final Objective (Objective VII) in Basic Training in our Heroic app. Your Heroic Soul Force score is the first thing you see when you open the Heroic app and it's THE individual metric by which we measure our success in helping you show up as the best, most Heroic version of yourself. It's by getting YOUR Soul Force to 101 then helping enough people ALSO activate their Soul Force that we'll have a shot at LITERALLY (!) changing the world. Then there's the sub-title to the Heroic book I'm working on. Can you guess what that might be? Yep… "A Training Manual to ACTIVATE YOUR SOUL FORCE"!! So… Here's the origin story on "Soul Force." It involves one of my heroes: Mahatma Gandhi. (Btw: Did you know that mahatma means "great soul" in Sanskrit? Yep. Aristotle had a word for that in ancient Greek as well: magnanimous.) We're all familiar with Gandhi's (paraphrased) admonition that, if we want to change the world, we each must be the change we want to see. What you may not know is just how FIERCELY disciplined Gandhi was. He practiced his philosophy with a relentlessness that I find deeply inspiring. He was the living embodiment of Areté. Of course, Gandhi liberated India via what we called "nonviolent resistance" in the West. But "nonviolent resistance" is a VERY weak translation of the Sanskrit word he coined to capture the essence of his movement and practice. The phrase he used was satyagraha. That word comes from two Sanskrit words: sat and graha. Sat means "beingness" or "truth." Graha means "polite insistence" or "force." Gandhi fiercely believed in and fiercely challenged his followers to stand in the power of truth. He knew that Britain's domination of India was morally wrong and that, if he and millions of others could stand in that truth without resorting to violence, he could liberate the country without having to go to war. Now, like many ancient/foreign words that are difficult to translate into English (see: eudaimonia and areté!), satyagraha can be translated as not just "truth force" but also as "love force" or... SOUL FORCE. There's an ineffable and extraordinary power that is palpable in an individual who is standing in their truth—living with fierce integrity to their highest ideals. THAT is what Gandhi cultivated within himself and was able to help cultivate within enough people to LITERALLY (!) change the world. It's also what every hero we've ever admired has embodied and what I am so fiercely committed to personally embodying and to helping you and enough people embody in your own idiosyncratic way such that we can LITERALLY (!) change the world. How do we do that? By showing up and living in integrity with our highest ideals. Not someday. TODAY.

+1: My All-Time Favorite Hero (Yours?) (#1290) Oct 02, 2022

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Here's Their (and YOUR!) Superpower In our last +1, we re-activated our +1 series and I made a 10,000-day commitment to you. Well, technically I made a 10,319-day commitment to you. Every day, from now until January 1, 2051, I commit to showing up in your inbox with a quick little splash of more wisdom in less time. If I don't show up, assume either our technology died or I died. (Hah. Seriously.) (I'm all in.) Why have I made that commitment? That's a very good question. With a range of possible answers. One of the reasons can be found on one of the tattoos on my left forearm. If you look closely above the "I" and the "C" in my "HEROIC" tattoo, you'll see "51 | 2051." Then, if you look closely below the "I" and the "C" in my "HEROIC" tattoo, you'll see "101 | 1M." The 51 | 2051 represents my commitment to helping create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051. The 101 | 1M represents HOW we will do that. The 101 is shorthand for the Soul Force I am committed to helping you activate in your life. But… We're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's step back for a moment and talk a little more about what "Soul Force" is in the first place. To make the point, I'd like to ask you a question… Who's your favorite hero? Seriously. Take a moment and think about that right now. Who comes to mind? I have a few of my favorite Heroes in my studio and on my office wall behind me. Great teachers and leaders who inspire me to show up as the best, most Heroic version of myself. Aristotle. Epictetus. Marcus Aurelius. Abraham Lincoln. Winston Churchill. Gandhi. Abraham Maslow. Martin Luther King, Jr. My wife and I even named our kids after two of our favorite Heroes: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Eleanor Roosevelt. So… Again… Who inspires YOU?! Seriously. What individuals—living or dead—embody the qualities you most admire? What individuals showed up and lived in a way that deeply inspires YOU to show up and give us all you've got? As you think about that, know this… All those Heroes showed up in their own idiosyncratic way—Gandhi was frail and would go days without talking while Churchill was portly and rarely STOPPED talking!! … And those two guys didn't even LIKE each other! BUT… ALL of those Heroes had ONE thing in common. It's what Aristotle had and what he helped ignite in Alexander the Great. It's what Epictetus had and what he helped Marcus Aurelius cultivate in his life. It's what Gandhi had and is the force that freed his nation. (And, for the record, it was GANDHI who actually gave this power its name.) It's what Martin Luther King, Jr. had, and, inspired by HIS hero Gandhi, something he actually talks about it in his "I have a dream" speech. It's what Eleanor Roosevelt had. And Florence Nightingale. And Helen Keller and Anne Frank and COUNTLESS others who may have made it into our history books or may have just humbly made an anonymous yet indelible mark on our world by deeply inspiring their friends and families and communities. So… What's the ONE thing ALL the great Heroes across all cultures throughout history have had in common? SOUL FORCE. It's every Hero's superpower. SOUL FORCE. It's that ineffable power you can feel in human beings living in integrity with their highest ideals. SOUL FORCE. It's the force that can (literally) change the world. And guess what… It's YOUR superpower as well. We just need to ACTIVATE IT. Not SOMEDAY. But TODAY. And then, very importantly!!, we need to REACTIVATE our Soul Force ALL DAY EVERY DAY. THAT, my dear friend, is how we can tap into YOUR Heroic potential and fundamentally and permanently change your life while fundamentally and permanently changing the world together. And doing THAT is what Heroic is all about. For now, I want to wrap up with one more question… Ultimately, do you know who my all-time favorite Hero is…? I'll give you a hint… Go look in the mirror. My all-time favorite Hero is, unquestionably… YOU. YOU are the Hero we've been waiting for. And helping YOU activate your Soul Force is my ultimate mission in life. Day 1, Hero. Let's go.

+1: 10,319 Days (#1289) Oct 01, 2022

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It's +1 Day 1 Again. And Always! Hi, This is Brian. Welcome back to another +1. This is +1 number 1,289. And… As you know if you've been following along, the last time I did a +1 was nearly two years ago—717 days ago to be precise. I took a little break to launch Heroic. I'm THRILLED to be back. We used to call these little micro lessons "Optimize +1s." Going forward, we're going to call them "Heroic +1s." When I first created the +1 series years ago (2005 days ago to be precise!), I committed to doing 1,000 days in a row. I wound up doing 1,288. This time, I'm committing to doing over 10,000 (!!!) days in a row. 10,319 days in a row to be precise. At which point I may consider taking a day off. So… If a new +1 doesn't show up in your inbox, assume that either our technology died or… I died. (Hah!) Seriously. I'm ALL IN. Why 10,319 days? Because that's how many days are left between now and January 1, 2051–the date by which we aspire to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing. We'll chat more about the origin story for that target and the tattoo on my left forearm that reflects my commitment to that moonshot goal. Why +1s? Because I believe that the only way to fundamentally and permanently change your life is to move from theory to practice to mastery TODAY. Not SOMEDAY. And definitely not only on the days when you (insert whiney voice) *feel* like it. If we want to forge antifragile confidence and more consistently express the best, most Heroic versions of ourselves, it's simple… We. Must. Show. Up. TODAY. ESPECIALLY on those days when we don't *feel* like it. Now… The feedback we got from our community about how our +1 series changed their lives was incredibly inspiring. And… After launching Heroic, I stepped back and looked at all the ways I (and we!) can best support you in getting your Soul Force to 101 (more on that soon!). We're fired up that the early research shows that the core Heroic app experience (featuring Basic Training and Target Practice) can help you flourish. And, we're fired up that all the old Optimize content—including over 1,000 +1s, over 600 PhilosophersNotes, and 50 Optimal Living 101 classes—is now integrated into one Heroic app. We're ALSO fired up that our Mastery Series (which research has *also* shown can help people change their lives and used to only be available as part of our Coach offering) is now part of our basic premium Heroic offering. Plus, we can't wait to roll out our integrated Heroic Social features and welcome more Guides to the platform as we continue to execute our vision in the months and years ahead as we strive to create a world-class social training platform that can serve as an answer to The Social Dilemma and, literally, help change the world. If you haven't signed up for the monthly/annual/lifetime options for Heroic, you can learn more about all that here: https://heroic.us/join And… As I thought about how we could best support you in fully activating your Soul Force (aka your Heroic superpower!), it became really (!) clear to me that reactivating the +1 series would be a super important part of that commitment to you and to the rest of our community. As I said in the VERY first +1 on Destiny Math, it's ALL (always!) about those tiny little decisions we make all day, every day. And, as we discussed in this +1 on Atomic Habits: Tiny = Mighty (inspired by wisdom from James Clear's super-popular Atomic Habits—check out those Notes), the exponential benefits of aggregating and compounding tiny little gains over an extended period of time by showing up day in and day out are CRAZY. For now… I'm thrilled to be back and, if you feel so inspired to have me in your life, I can't wait to see you tomorrow morning and every morning you'd like a little dose of ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools to help you optimize and actualize your potential. Of course, if you'd prefer NOT to hang out every morning, you can change your settings and get these +1s Weekly or never! Your ideal is our ideal. Just click one of the links in the footer of this email if you want to change your settings. 10,319 days. (Deo (and daimon) volente!) It's Day 1. Again. Always. You. Me. Our daimons. It's going to be Heroic. It's time to change the world. One person at a time. Together. Starting with you and me and us. TODAY.

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