OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time

Breathing. It’s easy to take for granted but when you stop to think about it, it quickly becomes obvious just how powerful it is. Get this: You can live for weeks without food and days without water but, of course, only minutes without oxygen.

Continuing our good times with Confucius, here’s one of the gems from his Analects that has tattooed itself on my brain since I read it a decade ago.

I can’t resist. One more +1 on Aristotle. So… The Olympic Games started in Olympia (not too far outside of Athens) in 776 BC. A few centuries later, Aristotle told us that you can’t just SHOW UP at the Olympics and look like a great athlete, you have to actually COMPETE.

In our last +1, we talked about Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the fact that his word for “happiness” was VERY different than our word. Eudaimonia, as we discussed, literally means “good soul” and implies a powerful sense of actualizing our potential—succeeding in expressing the best within ourselves. Today we’re going to focus on HOW Aristotle teaches us to create THAT type of “happiness.”

In our last +1, we talked about the fact that 25 minutes every day = 2 YEARS of your life. Did you figure out how you’re wasting time and make some progress eliminating that time wasting activity?

George Leonard was an aikido master who wrote a great little book called Mastery. It’s a tiny little book packed with a ton of wisdom. I highly recommend it. 

In our last +1, we talked about Rule #1 of Nutrition. You remember what it was? Basic idea: It’s not what you start eating that has the most positive impact. It’s what you STOP eating. There aren’t any Fountains of Youth in nature; there ARE poisons. And, you can’t eat enough broccoli to make up for all that pizza.

Nathaniel Branden was a fascinating guy. As a teenager he wrote a fan letter to Ayn Rand—which she ignored. Then he wrote another letter a little later which led to an intimate relationship and collaboration. 

We’ve talked about how exercise is kinda like taking a little bit of Ritalin and a little bit of Prozac, but somehow we’ve gotten this far into our +1 series without talking about the fact that exercise is as effective as Zoloft in reducing depression.

In Self-Image 101, we talked about how to create the most heroically awesome version of yourself by integrating the “Optimus” you and the “en*theos” you into the “Hērōs” you. We also talked about Other Image 101—aka: How do you see OTHERS?

How to Feel Empowered Around Food and Fuel Your Awesomely Authentic Life

Here's another little gem from Dan Pink’s To Sell Is Human. (The man is a brilliant writer and a treasure-trove of goodness.) He tells us that, according to research from McKinsey: “the typical American hears or reads more than one hundred thousand words every day.” Think about that for a moment. 100,000 words. EVERY DAY. When I think about that, I immediately think of a few things: A Lion, a King, and a Monk. 

Emerson is learning how to read and I’m the lucky guy who gets to teach him. The other day Emerson wrote his first word: “mom.” Then he busted out “dad.” Then he was able to write his name by himself. (I get a little misty just typing that.)

Yesterday we reviewed our Motivation Equation. I hope you took the time to hang out with your #1 Wildly Important Goal and run it through the little magical formula. 

One of the themes we come back to again and again is the basic idea of loving what is — whether that’s via Byron Katie’s wisdom or the Stoics or the Serenity Prayer. Here’s another take on it that I’ve found super helpful.