The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 552: Brian Johnson - How To Activate Your Heroic Potential, Develop Charisma, Become Intrinsically Motivated, Build Emotional Stamina, & Live With Arete

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Charisma: Presence, Power, and Warmth - Show up, be fully there. In that moment with the person in front of you. Flip the switch. Understand your power. And deeply care for others. Be warm, not cold. And it's important that each of these is expressed with authenticity. That's how to develop more charisma. How to develop our protocol - A simple exercise. Get a sheet of paper. On one side write "DO." On the other side, write "DON'T." Think of yourself at your best, what do you do? That's your protocol. And remember that the worse you feel, the more committed you need to be to your protocol It's always day one. Brian thinks of his time spent with the Navy SEALs. They work to earn their trident every single day. Today is the day. It's always the right day to earn it. It's always day 1. Arete – An ancient Greek word. We translate it into English as 'virtue' or 'excellence,' but it has a deeper meaning. Something closer to 'expressing the best version of yourself moment to moment to moment.' Inter-leaving - The basic idea is simple: If you want to learn something, you're better off varying your practice rather than grooving one identical rep after another. Epictetus - One of his students took great lecture notes and captured his wisdom in a manual called the Enchiridion. The Greek word for Enchiridion is translated as "handbook," and it's important to note that the word literally means "within" + "hand." Intrinsic versus Extrinsic motivation – Which motivation leads to greater levels of happiness and flourishing? Why? It's why people who get to the peak of what David Brooks calls the "First Mountain" look around and wonder why they don't feel fulfilled. They got all the stuff they were told would make them happy and… they're not. Phil Stutz wrote the Foreword – Practice comprised of unusual people. "They refuse to be defined by any single accomplishment. Their Identity is based on a process of endless possibility. They don't stop creating." Two primary obstacles getting in our way are fear and laziness. This comes from Phil Stutz... AM and PM Bookends – "Get these right and you're 80% there." Targeted thinking - What do I want? What's needed to get that done? Consistency - "Who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say." Unshakeable confidence -- Anti-fragile confidence. You have intense trust that you have what it takes to respond. Anti-Fragility - The more life kicks you around, the better you get. Emotional stamina - The worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. Protocol - Think of yourself at your best... What are you doing? Hero - An ancient Greek word for protector Get clear on your identity Sleep, meditate, work out, work, love Pilots have checklists before they fly a plane... We should use one too each day. Create your "Do" and "Don't" list Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivation -- Deepend relationships, help in your community, focus on your eulogy virtues today... Hire a coach... We all need a coach A great coach has believable hope, they see your potential

Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more effective leader.

Text Hawk to 66866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Brian Johnson is the founder and CEO of Heroic Public Benefit Corporation and the author of Arate, Activate Your Heroic Potential. As a founder, CEO, he's built and sold two social platforms. As a philosopher and teacher, he's trained more than 10,000 heroic, coaches from 100 plus countries and created a protocol that changes lives during this conversation. We discussed how to move from theory to practice to mastery, how to learn, how to learn, then how

to get clearer on your personal purpose, then how to better understand intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. We cover that and so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy. This conversation with the great Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson, welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Ryan, I appreciate you. You're thrilled to be here. You've written that it's always day one at Heroic. What does it's always day one mean to you? You know, every single time I say that I think of the Navy SEALs and blessed to have relationships with some guys I really admire who have served on the SEAL team. and I once got a tour of their facilities, did some work with them and brought my son down and got a tour. And at the end of it, I was given a card that the Navy SEALs get right after they finish how weak and they get, you know, their tri-d-ents, et cetera.

And on the front of the card, it says earn your trident every day. And so for me, my number one commitment is to be worthy of being in a position to lead what I hope is a significant movement that can make a difference in the world. And today's the day. It's day one. Today's the day I need to be worthy of that to earn my trident and to do the hard work. So that's what I think about every single time I say that and I say that a lot. Today's the day to move from theory to practice to mastery together. Let's go. To move from theory to practice to mastery together. What does that mean? How do we go about doing that? Because there's a lot of theory talk, right? But as Hermione Abara said, we learn who we are in practice, not in theory.

We got to do it. We got to actually get on the field under the bright light. that's when we really learn. How do you go about from theory to action to mastery? Yeah. I mean, that's my life's work is in this moment. There's a best version of you. You're capable of expressing that. You're either closing that gap between who you're capable being,

who you're actually being or not. So it's moment to moment. To take the idea, as we already know, theoretically, and put them into practice. You know, broader chat in terms of behavioral design and the art and science of behavioral change. But at the end of the day, it's, again, it's a moment to moment practice of,

of that which we know we're capable of doing and being. And that that's our entire heroic public benefit cooperation and app is that. How do we move you from theory to practice to mastery together? Yeah. And then again, the one word answer to it is Artae. In this moment, there's that best version of you that's begging to be expressed. You don't need to read another book. You don't need to listen to another podcast. They're great, right? The books, the podcast, the classes. But at the of the day, you know, we just seemed to step up and do it. I love Arate, man. When I saw it was a title of your book, I thought, perfect. That is so perfect for Brian. Can you go deeper on the history, right? It's an ancient Greek work, but the history of the word, it's tattooed on your arm. Like,

what does Artee mean to you? Dude, I want to hear when you saw the title, because I know we've known each other for a while now. What went through your mind? That gives me goosebumps, just imagining what you're so. I gave a talk to a white, PO group in Michigan and the leader of that group's named McKeill Haggerty. McKeel's become a good friend. I'm actually seeing him tomorrow of all days, which is wild that we had this scheduled today. And he came up to me and he said, he didn't say Arta, he said, Aratee. And I was like, huh? And he's like, like, Aratee. I like saying Aratee. That's what I'm all about. That's what you're about. This is excellence, like the pursuit of excellence of being the best you can be.

And so after he walked up after that speech and said that to me, this was four years ago, I just went deep on the meaning of that word. And so when I saw that was the title of your book, it literally felt perfectly aligned with just the way you are. I've been watching your Philosopher's Notes videos on YouTube for a long time because I think you're one of the best in the world at compression of ideas and sharing the usefulness of books in like 12 minutes. And to me, it actually makes me more excited to read the books, not less like,

oh, I already got this. I can move on. So anyway, I thought it was just perfectly aligned with who you are and what you're all about. That's amazing, man. I appreciate that. And yeah, so Arate is an ancient Greek word. It's the one word answer that Aristotle would give us and the ancient Stoics would give us when we ask them, hey, you know, what's the meaning of life? Aristotle will say eudaimonia, which means good soul, you daimon, right, which we translate into English as to flourish to express your best self. But then you say, all right, that sounds nice, but how do we do that? And he would say you need to live with orate. So the word directly translates as virtue or excellence, but has a deeper meaning,

something closer to expressing the best version of yourself moment to moment. The way I like to frame it up is, look, in any given moment, I draw this line up here, right? You're capable of being this. And if you are being this, and there's a gap between who you could have been and who you are being, it's in that gap in which regret, anxiety, disillusionment exists. If you can close the gap, there's no room for that regret, anxiety, disillusionment, etc. Living with Artae is closing that gap. It's expressing your best self.

Again, moment to moment. And that's exciting because in any given moment, no matter how many bad moments you had before, you have a choice. You can step forward and express that best self or not. In the moment in which you do express your best self, in my mind, the other tattoo on the other forearm you are heroic. You're flourishing. You're expressing and experiencing that deep sense of eudaimonic joy. That's the basic idea behind Artae as I see it. Where did this come from? I'm curious about your upbringing, about early mentors in your life. Someone who's working so hard not only to live

in alignment for themselves of what they're about and their values and the behaviors that match those values, but then you have seemed to have such a desire, right? You've stated your mission and you can feel free to restate it, your mission to impact people. But I am fascinated what caused this great thing to come out of you. Oh, well, I appreciate that. And my mom comes up. I'm a good Catholic boy at heart. We got a bunch of my heroes behind me here.

What you don't see is up there is Jesus. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school for 12 years, and just that spirit of true heroic profound service. And in the book, one of the final chapters is a story of me. when I start the book with a story of me hanging out with my 10-year-old kid. Yeah. And then I end the book. I think it's like the third to last chapter with my mom doing something with me when I was 10.

Long story short, she was devout, Catholic. And once upon a time, I had done something to upset her, which was very rare. I was just that golden child, whatever. And she grabbed me and she shook me by the shoulders and she said, God gave you gifts. You need to give them to the world. And I get good from saying that I can feel like it was yesterday. And in many ways, my life is an expression of that. I feel blessed to have the life that I have and I feel absolutely committed to doing my best,

to play my role well. I got Marcus Aurelius up on this wall who's reminding me, play your role well, give your gifts and service to the world. So that's just, that's been part of my upbringing, my DNA and then just, you know, I've worked really hard to try to craft clarity on the vision and the mission and then do everything of my power to help people show up as the best, most heroic version of it. themselves. But, you know, that's what arises. I can bring it all the way back to that point in time. And there's been a lot of, you know, experimentation over the last, you know, four decades since

then to figure out what that actually means. And now, as you know, I've gone all in. How do we create a world, another tattoo, in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051, which is the moonshot goal Martin Seligman created in the year 2000 when they created the positive psychology movement. When I first heard that, I thought that was insane. I'm a reasonably ambitious guy, but I'm like, that's crazy. I still think it's crazy, but I've dedicated my life to it, tattooed my body with it. And the joke is, you know, you write down your goals, you increase the odds of success by something like 42%. All right, well, most people write it down on a Post-it note, put it on Mother bathroom mirror.

I'm all in. There's no turning back and looking sideways. That's the basic idea. How do you define people flourishing? It's a great question. actually a scientific measure in which you can look at how they're doing in different aspects of their life. So it's a sense of well-being and how you're showing up. Different people define it different ways. Martin Seligman puts perma. He has a little acronym where you have positive emotions,

engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. So there's a constellation of different attributes that one experiences when they are flourishing that can be measured. And we're all about ancient, wisdom and modern science. So we've actually done several studies now of people going through our coach program using our app and we've been able to see that we can move people from the accepted scale of flourishing significantly in minutes a day over 30 days. But it's really important to get real clear on that from a rigorous scientific perspective, be able to measure it and move the needle again as a longer chat, but something that I think is really important. Can we dig into Aratea? I've been devouring this book. I told you before.

have enough notes for us to talk for a few days. We'll do less. I'm going to dig into specific passages and maybe have you pull on these threads. Is that cool? Dude, I love it. I appreciate you already jumping in, man. For sure. So learning how to learn, that sounds like, well, yeah, you just, you know, read or you, right?

There's different styles of learning. But no, there's a lot more to it. I think learning how to learn is important. And there's a phrase called interleaving. What is interleaving and how will us being aware of that make us better at learning how to learn? Yeah, so the example I use in that, so I teach a bunch of classes, as you know. I do the philosopher's notes in which I read these books on different subjects, then I boil them down into these 101 classes.

So in the book I talk about Learning 101, one of the classes I teach, and one of the main principles in Learning 101 and just the science of learning is something called interleaving. And the example I use is if you want to teach baseball players how to hit a baseball, and they got to want to hit a curveball and a fastball and all this. Usually what happens in batting practices, hey, here are 15 fastballs and here are 15 curveballs. You do one, then you do, again, then you do the other. But the science shows that you'll feel like you're doing really well when you do that. And they call it a fluency illusion. But if you really want to improve your skills, you need to interleave. It needs to be unknown what's coming next. Are you getting a curveball next or a

fastball because that's what the real life situation is going to be. So interleaving is leaving the comfort of, you know, where you feel fluent in what you're doing and you deliberately expose yourself to variables that are unpredictable. But I use that in the context of the book of, hey, we're going to jump around from different ideas. But anytime we're learning, we want to do that. And again, different contexts we can apply it to. But that's the high level. Gotcha. So I feel like if I was, my background was in professional selling before I left to do this full time, Brian. And so going into the training room as I view this is you're not saying, okay, we're just going to work on our openings here or we're going to work on their objections and how you handle them. Part of the

training needs to be, you've got to work on the unknown. You don't know what that prospect is going to say. So if you know it's just about objections or just about openings or just about closing, yeah, you could feel like you're doing a good job. But in reality, you're not covering the important part of the unknown element. Is that right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's a great contextual. I love it. What's targeted thinking? Targeted thinking is it's one of my favorite things. So I adapted it from Trevor Moad had something called neutral thinking. And he says, look, Russell Wilson, quarterback of the Seahawks and Al Broncos, he coached him and he said, look, you can have positive thinking, you could have negative thinking and you could have neutral thinking. Positive thinking is,

hey, it's all great. Negative thinking is, no, it all sucks. Neutral thinking is, hey, it is what it is, right? And then now it needs to get done. So I extended that to targeted thinking. And again, we can go back to Aristotle. So Aristotle told us we're teleological, which means that healthy people are teleological. We have targets. Tilos is a target. So we want to know what we want in our lives. We want to radically accept whatever is currently in our lives.

But then we say, what do I want? So targeted thinking has two primary components. One, getting clarity on what you want. And two, getting clarity on what you need to do to move in the direction of getting the thing that you want. And again, we can apply this to any different number of different domains, but I practice this all day every day. It's what we teach our coaches to teach their clients. And that's targeted thinking. What do you want? What do you need to do to do to get it? Go do it. Repeat all day every day. And that's a really practical way to close the gap. Because you hear it, you're like, all right, cool, living with

RTA closing the gap. But how? Well, when you feel yourself stressed out or overwhelmed or whatever and starting to do vicious things rather than virtuous things, take a breath, step back half an end. and say, what do I want? In an argument with your spouse, well, what do you want? Or your colleague, what do you want? You want to have a healthy, thriving relationship. All right, cool. Is what you're doing right now helping you get that?

If so, keep on doing it. If not, step back and look at it and say, all right, well, if I want that, then I need to do this. It's proven to be a really practical tool in my life and in the work that we do with our community. You made me think of that real life example that pops up. Let's say you're having a disagreement with your spouse, right? where you're a human being. I got to believe it happens from time to time. Maybe it's about parenting or who knows.

Are you? Because sometimes I get emotional and I react instead of respond. I always regret it when I do this, whether you raise your voice or you didn't really think and the thing you said was stupid. How are you able to implement this in a real life scenario? Let's say something was done that you're not happy with, whether it's from one of your kids or your wife and you are able to use these things you, teach in your actual life. Yeah, and you laugh. Maybe it's happened to you. Maybe it's

happened to me once or twice. Maybe it happened once or twice this morning. Yeah, of course. You know, energy, we talk about the big three, which we may talk about too, but energy, work, and love are the big three that I think you need to get right in your life. Energy and work are easy for me. Love is the most challenging, you know? I mean, interrelationships are always going to be the most challenging. If you're a parent, it sounds like we didn't talk about it before, but it sounds like you have kids as well. Yeah. I love it, dude. So clearly, we're going to fall short of our standards. That's just going to happen. There's no scenario in which we're going to perfectly hit the target every single time. No archer goes out to the target and hits a

bullseye every single time. And if they do, you tell them to move the target out. It's too easy for them. So you got to embrace the fact that it's supposed to be hard, you will fall short. What I do is similar to what I just described, which is, all right, well, what do I want? Can I catch myself in that moment and get clarity on this is not helping me get what I want? And I sometimes can tap the brakes and steer it accordingly. And other times I don't. It becomes a less than optimal experience, shall we say. In those moments, I love to go to a guy named Lanny Basham, who wrote with winning in mind. One of my favorite mental toughness books, he's an Olympic gold medal rifle shooter. So again, rifle shooters have targets. He says, when you inevitably miss the target,

most people either want to ignore it and then numb themselves or they ruminate on it. And they just play again and again how they mess this up. They mess. mess this up, they'd mess it up. He says, no, go back to right at that moment when you miss the target, rewind, and the way I extended it is rewind. And I tell in the book, I tell a story of my kids and I driving home. We're 45-minute drive, 30 minutes in, they just go bonkers. You know, and I lose my patience, and it's just awesome. And then, you know, 10 minutes later, my son's forgotten about it. We're driving and we live in the country, you know, the mailbox is like a mile away from our house, but it's all country road. No one's on it. He likes to get in my lap and drive home with me.

So usually that's a really fun way to end the drive. So he's like, hey, Daddy, can I drive from the mailbox? And I'm here thinking that, you know, 10 minutes ago, he called me a jerky face, right? And I'm like, dude, not a big fan of being called jerky face. No. So I had this opportunity to say, yeah, we're good, dude. Come on up. And the night would have been awesome.

Instead, I let a gap exist. And I'm like, no, dude, not going to happen. And then the rest of the night was what you'd expect from, you know, what was happening before. So then the following morning, I'm sitting there and I'm going back. through this analysis. So now I'm like, at what moment did I really go sideways and what could I have done differently? So I went back to that moment and I imagined right there in that moment. I could have said, yeah, dude, we're good. Come on up. And it would have been goosebumps transformation. I didn't do that, but I replayed that in my head and I committed to next time I'm in that situation,

remember, get a little bit better. And then what I did, which I think is really important, is I repaired with him and I taught him the exact thing I just shared with you. So I said, hey, dude, and my daughter as well, just wanted to be in a rough night. Hey, this is what happened. And this is what I could have done differently in order to have a better night. What do you think about that? I'm sorry, I repaired while I use the data to get a little bit better. That is my biggest challenge as a man and as a husband and father is that.

Navigating the process with an 11-year-old and a 6-year-old, knowing I'm never going to be perfect. But then using those opportunities in which I fall short of my standards to get better while teaching them the things I wish my dad taught me, you know, decades ago. But that's a long answer to your short question. Well, the modeling part, you hear leadership is caught, right? They're going to see what you do more than they necessarily listen to what you say. And that's the thing I try to think about at like a 24-7 thing. Like it's about us. This isn't just a parenting thing. I think this is at work. This is everywhere. That the important thing is

thinking of ourselves as the model that we not so like they have to become us exactly but that's what they're going to be most influenced by is what we choose to do what we say how we'd say it what we do each day the consistency at which we do it feels to me like such an important element of leadership i think it's by far the most important so ralph waldo emerson's my first hero up there we named my son after him. He says who you are speaks so loudly. I cannot hear what you say. So with our coaches that we work with, you know, we say your client number zero. You have to be a radiant exemplar. And the great leadership teachers say that they're not going to believe the message unless they believe the messenger. And then you got to do what you say you will do. You got to be a

radiant example are in integrity with your highest standards. And there's something about people who are living in integrity with their highest ideals. The seventh objective is the book is activate your superpower in which I talk about the fact that all of our favorite heroes have one thing in common, which I call soul force, which Gandhi named, but they have a moral charisma. There's something about people who are living in integrity with their highest ideals that people feel, literally on a neurobiological level, they feel integrity. And And this is ancient Chinese philosophy. Uwe, effortless right action was about cultivating this moral charisma because that's what the ancient

leaders wanted to have because they knew that's how you get people to follow your lead. So I don't think there's anything more important for each of us as human beings, as husbands and fathers, as leaders in whatever context, than to be in integrity with our ideals. Life's a lot more fun. It's a lot easier to lead. And no question. Our example is always going to be the kind of loudest lesson that we're teaching. The word charisma pops up a lot in leadership.

And I've read a lot about the charisma myth. Olivia Fox Cabani writes that. And you've studied that as well. How do we, I know this is a little bit separate from moral charisma, but how do we, because I find you as a pretty charismatic guy, I wonder if it's from getting so many reps on camera that you're a really effective communicator. I don't know. But how does a regular person develop more charisma? Yeah, well, I love that you brought her up. The charisma myth, three elements, she says scientifically. One is presence. Two is power. And three is warmth. And all of us can

cultivate this. And it's like a thermostat, she says, you know, you can turn it up and turn it down. And each of us can't express it in our own idiosyncratic ways. So what I've tried to do is express myself more, you know, authentically, being willing to be unapologetically intense and other things. But each of us will show up differently. But the idea first and foremost is presence. So if you want to cultivate charisma, and again, I don't think you can separate charisma and moral charisma ultimately. I think the most powerful thing you can do is practice your philosophy. Show up. Do the things you know you could be doing. Because if you don't have that, you won't have confidence. You won't have a deep sense of trust in yourself. And people will feel that. But from her perspective,

there are three things. One, you need to be present. So someone who comes to a networking event, I'm not a big networking event guy, but let's say you're at a networking event or you're at a social event or you're at a corporate meeting. And you're looking over the person's shoulder you're hanging out with to see if anyone more interesting is there. Or you're looking down at your phone. And you're basically saying you're not important to me. So rule number one of charisma is presence. You're fully there with the individual with whom you're connecting right now. I'm not thinking about anything else right now than you. You and me connecting and hopefully serving one, person with our conversation is all that is on my mind. All that was on my mind is I got ready for

our chat today, X minutes before. So presence is something that I've practiced a lot, trying to be here right now, not doing two things at once at any point being here. The second thing is power. And so we tell our coaches flip the switch. You have a posture through which the best, most heroic version of yourself shows up. You have a breathing pattern that's calm and deliberate. You have a mental focus that when you're truly engaged in your best self, you're right there. So you're present and you're powerful. Other things she says that are great are think of moments in your life in which you showed up as your best. That's a way to cultivate power right before you do something in general or something that scares you in particular. So now you're present. You're projecting a certain amount of grounded

non-lame power. And then the third aspect is really important. You're warm. You're not present and powerful and cold, in which case people are afraid of you because you're there, right? And you've got this strength and power, but people think you might use it against them. Then they're going to be terrified of you. They may do certain things, but you're not going to have charisma. So when you combine the presence, the comfortable calm warmth and I'm sorry, calm power and the warmth where you actually care about people and they can feel that, you have a deep sense of charisma from her mind. And again, when you combine that with like, that's one, two, and three, I would say, say zero and plus one book ending it is, you know you're the type of person who's living in

integrity with your highest values. You're not perfect. You have humility, but you also have this unshakable confidence that you're doing the work. You put all that together and you have, again, what the ancient Chinese philosophy has dedicated everything to, what Gandhi dedicated himself to what Martin Luther King talked about in the I Have a Dream speech. He quoted Gandhi's soul force. That's it. That's the power that changes your life. And I think, changes organizations and changes the world. How does someone build unshakable confidence? Yeah, goosebumps yet again. That's a great question. So objective two in the book is forge anti-fragile confidence, in which I define what it means to enter a forge, what anti-fragility

means, and what confidence means. So very quickly, I'll start with confidence. So confidence is from two little Latin words confidere with intense trust is what the word confidence means. So it's not intense trust that everything will go perfectly. It's intense trust that it doesn't matter what happens because you have what it takes to respond. So then I like to say how do you develop trust in any relationship? If confidence is trust, then how do you develop that in any relationship? Clearly, you do what you say you will do. So if you and I have a time to get together and I don't show up, Would you trust me? You might give me a pass the first time.

You know what I mean? I'm so sorry. But if I did that again, you wouldn't and you shouldn't trust me. You wouldn't have confidence in me. All right, cool. Well, guess what? If you want to develop a deep relationship of trust with yourself, what do you got to do? You got to do what you say you will do.

So if you say you're going to get up in the morning, go to bed early, turn off your electronics, get up in the morning and meditate and move your body and do some deep work and connect with your family without phones or whatever else you say is important to you. and you don't do those things, you shouldn't trust yourself. You shouldn't have confidence. But that's exciting because you can cultivate that trust by doing the things you say you will do, which again is leadership rule number one. So that's confidence. And then if you want to have anti-fragile, unshackable confidence, then we define anti-fragileity. This is Nassim Talib, the great intellectuals he coined the word. If you're fragile and life hits you, then you break.

If you're resilient, life hits you, you endure more stress. then you bounce back a little bit quicker after you get knocked down. But there's something that is the opposite of being fragile, which is the more life kicks you around, the stronger you get. That's anti-fragility. And so what I like to do is combine the two. I want to cultivate anti-fragile confidence in everyone we serve. Now, to do that, I go to my coach, Phil Stutz, who's on my wall back there.

He called it emotional stamina. And Phil was in the Netflix documentary called Stutz, which I love, I highly recommend. But he says you need to develop emotional stamina. And the way you develop emotional stamina, which I call anti-fragile confidence, is this, the worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. Now, there's two aspects to that. First, it presupposes you have a protocol. Your protocol is what you do when you're at your best. So you got to know who you are and what you do when you're at your best.

Then when you're getting knocked down and you feel at your worst, you're most committed to your program. Now, I know in my past, what I used to do when life would hit me hard and I was feeling stress is I'd go do all the stupid stuff that invited the circus into town. But what if instead, when those same things happen, we doubled down in our protocol. And that's my entire life's work, is to help people get clarity on who they are at their best, make that prior best their new baseline, and then when life hits them, they get stronger. That's my vantage point on how you cultivate anti-fragile confidence. my favorite topic. What are the first few steps, let's say someone goes protocol. Oh, Brian,

quietly to themselves, I don't think I have protocol. What are the first few steps somebody could take to get a protocol in place? Yep. Perfect. So then what I would say is right now you can do it, bust out a piece of paper. Okay. On one half of the paper at the very top put do and on the other half put don't. And I just did it right here. And I don't know if you can see that. But I got do up here. I got don't there, draw a line in the middle. Think about yourself at your best. Every single one of us has had highlight real, I was just on fire at that phase in my life.

All right, so my question for you is, what do we spend a minute or two on this? Spend 10 or 20, 30 seconds on it. What were you doing when you're at your all-time best? Were you sleeping a certain way? Were you eating a certain way? Were you moving your body a certain way? Where you're showing up and making certain leadership decisions

or doing deep work? What were you doing? What were you doing? And then what were you not doing? Were you binge drinking when you're at your best? Were you binge Netflix watching shows or whatever? What were you doing? What were you not doing?

That's now we're making progress. Because if we can more consistently do the things you do when you're at your best and not do the things you don't do when you're at your best, and we get clarity on that and then we make a ruthless commitment to, that's my new baseline, who I was at my best. Now, of course, you need to systematically work it and figure out how to install and delete habits and all the other things. But that's a really simple, powerful exercise.

Then what I would do is, and this is what I talked about in a keynote I gave on Mental Health Day last week. As I was talking about these ideas, I ended with this. Go back to the list, do and don't. Circle the number one thing that if you started doing it would most positively change your life. And then circle the thing that you know you need to stop doing, which frankly is the fastest way to change your life. We call them kryptonites. Get rid of your kryptonite. So the number one start, the number one stop.

I come back to that all the time, a little bit wobbly or whatever, or I just want to go to the next level. I'm like, all right, what's the number one thing I need to be doing at a higher level and the thing I need to stop doing? Anyway, again, long answer, but that's how I like to concretize it. Yeah, what are some of the things on your personal do and don't list, like when you're at your best versus when you're not? So we architected our heroic app around this entire thing.

And I throw it up and actually show you. but I literally in our app we have you get clarity on your identity who you are at your best in your energy work and love so I take it a step deeper right and I have you say all right right you got a cool list there but why don't we separate it in the big three I want to know what you do and don't do in your energy your work and your love and our app is architected around that so to answer your question directly I know my big three in my energy work in love in energy for example I'm in bed for eight to nine hours a day. Full stop. With asterix, I'm traveling last week. I'm just doing my thing and enjoying, you know, kind of grinding a bit. But on a day-to-day basis, I'm in bed eight to nine hours a night.

Sleep is my secret weapon. I make sure I get a good night of sleep. I meditate for at least a minute, usually at least 11 minutes a morning every single morning. That's my number two habit in energy. My number three habit and energy is I got this little fun game I play where every day I do one sun salutation, 10 pull-ups, 100 burpees, 1,000 meters of rowing, and I walk 10,000 steps. Now, it's really hard to have a really bad day when I do those three things. And then I've got my top three things in work. So in work, I recommit to my, I made a vow. I have 3,000 investors from 75 countries around the world.

I made a vow to them that I recommit to every morning. And then every single morning, I do the most important thing that day. And then I strive to do the most important thing all day every day. And then I do some other things in work. And then in love, same thing. I recommit to being with my wife. Been married for 17 years. I want to be married for 51 years.

Every morning I recommit to that. My sacred vow, boom, takes me a second. And then I create moments with my kids and I do some other things in my love. But, you know, my checklist, which is another way we describe it is, pilots have checklists. You'd never get on a plane where the pilot didn't go through a checklist. Surgeons have checklists. The research is insane.

surgeons that don't have checklists, simple stuff. Like, hey, my name is so-and-so. We're going to operate on this side of the body. Simple things. Surgeons who don't have a checklist kill 42% more people. So my thing is you need a checklist. What's on your checklist to make sure you don't kill masterpiece days. Very simple things.

One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three in our energy work and love. And then my thing is, good luck having a bad day. Now, you'll have highs and lows, but you won't go off the rails. especially if when you do have a bad day, you double down and you show up the next day with the ferocity to make sure that today's the day you go next level, it's life changing. Even just getting one, five, 10 percent better at it. Again, very long answer to your short question, but I'm obviously passionate about it because that's what it comes down to.

Know who you will do it more and more consistently and everything changes. What about for that person who says, Brian, dude, just trying to relax and enjoy my life. This seems like a lot of work. What do you say to that person? I said, perfect. If your life is working for you, then keep on doing what you're doing. And then I say, all right, well, you know, this isn't a dress rehearsal. And the unfortunate fact is 80% of us are struggling mentally and psychological and emotionally

with anxiety, depression, et cetera. And if it isn't us, it's someone in our family. Full stop. I mean, the suicide rates, the self-harm rates, especially among the next generation, are horrific. So then you asked me before, well, what drives you? I didn't define what the word hero means. And again, not everyone is going to be aligned with what we're talking about. But if you're this deep into a talk like this, you care.

You want to make a difference in your life and in your family and in your communities and the teams that you lead. Full stop. That's not even negotiable. So the word hero, etymologically, it's an ancient Greek word. It means protector. It doesn't mean killer of bad guys or tough guy. It means protector. So my whole thing is I want to introduce the idea of Arate to the cultural discussion.

you know, different people like you who are really deep into this stuff knew it, but most people don't. And then I want to redefine what it means to be a hero and challenge all of us to be the heroes we've been waiting for because the reality is we're facing historically significant challenges. You know, it's not just recovering from COVID. It's pandemic levels of anxiety, depression, cancer, diabetes, political polarization, etc. So you're the hero we've been waiting for. And, you know, it's activate your heroic potential. Four hundred and fifty one ideas in the book. He You've got to light yourself on fire. You got to activate yourself. Realize this isn't a dress rehearsal. Let's go. Or not. You know, roll over and pull the covers back over your head and enjoy the life that you got, you know? I say playfully. I enjoyed reading about motivation and Artae, specifically intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. You talk about David Brooks's book, The First Mountain and why some people look around and wonder why they don't feel fulfilled after maybe even a huge accomplishment. Can you go deeper on the different sorts of

motivation, specifically intrinsic versus extrinsic? Yeah, so scientists have studied motivation. And as you framed it up, there's two different types principally, intrinsic vis-à-vis extrinsic. Now, no one's going to have 100% of one or the other. But we've been seduced to think that a happy, good life comes chasing extrinsic things like fame, wealth, and hotness. Instagram followers, square footage of your house, all the other things that are kind of outside of yourself. They may impress other people for a split second, but they don't give you a deep sense of satisfaction. That's extrinsic stuff. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is what's been shown to lead to deep levels of sustainable happiness. Those include three things.

One, becoming a better human being. Two, deepening your relationships. And three, making a contribution to your families, communities, teams, etc. Now, again, no one's going to be 100% one or the other. But if you are predominantly going after the extrinsic stuff, which almost all of us are, because that's what we've been seduced to chase and think is a good life. Kedonic versus eudaimonic pleasures, what one would describe it scientifically.

If you are predominantly focused on the extrinsic stuff, even if you are successfully pursuing them, you will be, and it always strikes me when I say this, and I quote, less psychologically stable than someone who is pursuing intrinsic stuff. Now the David Brooks thing is interesting. The second mountain, you get up the top of the first mountain, you realize, oh, this is what my life was supposed to be. Stephen Covey talked about this 30, 40 years ago. He said it's like climbing up a ladder, getting to the top rung and realizing you put it up against the wrong wall. And so that's intrinsic,

extrinsic. Another metaphor I like to use is if a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, But that first step is in the wrong direction. The faster you go and pursuit in the wrong direction, the further away you get from the actual goal, which is why objective one in the book is, you got to know the ultimate game. You got to step back. And you've got to realize you've almost certainly been told to play the wrong game. So that's, it's a really important part of the conversation to get that right. And when you do, it's a subtle thing, but it significantly shifts our orientation.

around that which matters most. When we start living those eulogy virtues to use a David Brooks and a Stephen Covey idea, not someday, but today, you want to be remembered like this type of person. Well, it's not going to be the extrinsic stuff. It's not going to be, you know, how many cars you had and all the other houses you had and all the other extrinsic stuff. It's going to be who you were and what virtues you embodied. And my challenge to everyone is, all right, in our community, are you living those now? And that's the ultimate game as we frame it up. You mentioned Phil Stutz, who great documentary with Jonah Hill on Netflix, and then he's your friend and wrote the foreword to your book. And one of the chapters of the book, Phil, you call Grandpa Phil, where he's a great, he's a great grandpa godfather of one of your children.

So I consider, so Phil and I have worked over 400, we've had over 400 one-on-one sessions. So I've worked with him for almost eight years. and he's just he's become a spiritual father of mine so he and I love him deepest living influence on me and so the joke in the book was grandpa Phil so he's my son's grandpa spiritual god spiritual grandfather that that's the context in that in the book and the story that I tell there okay two primary obstacles this comes from Phil getting in our way are fear and laziness tell me more about that fear and laziness are two of the primary obstacles that Phil says are getting in our way Yeah, so the context in that in terms of the book is my son's struggling with something.

He wants to go to a chess tournament, but he doesn't want to go to the chess tournament. We're talking about the voice in his head. Phil calls that part X. We all have a part X. Stephen Pressfield calls a resistance. Call it whatever you want. But we've all got that voice in our heads that are telling us all the things we don't want to do and all the other things. But Phil distills it, and his favorite teacher was Rudolph Steiner.

So Rudolph Steiner says there are two things, getting in the first. the way of you expressing the best version of yourself to living with RTA and experiencing new daemonia to use R frame. Fear and laziness. And from my vantage point, when I step back and look at my own life, that's absolutely spot on. When I'm falling short of my standards, there's one or both of those things at play. And Aristotle said the most important virtue one can embody is courage is the willingness to act in the presence of fear. We all feel fear. Your infinite potential exists outside of your comfort zone. All right, well, how does it feel when you're outside of your comfort zone? Uncomfortable. You feel afraid. You feel overwhelmed. You feel all the other

things. Perfect. Get excited about those emotions because that's your ticket to your potential. So fear comes in and then laziness. And the reality is, if we're honest with ourselves, that's happening a lot. We're either being bounced around by fear of, oh, I don't feel I'm afraid to do it, therefore I don't do it, or I don't feel like doing it, therefore I don't do it. So, So it's exciting again to step back and to see that, to have the wisdom and then the discipline and then the love and the courage, the four cardinal virtues of ancient wisdom and modern science. You got to know the ultimate game.

You got to actually do the things you know you could do, conquering laziness in the process, and then you've got to have the courage, all of which is fueled by love. So I didn't make the point that a hero is a protector and our secret weapon is love. So my greatest drive in life are my two kids, my team, the community we're blessed to serve, that's where we muster the strength to find the discipline and to find the courage to show up and give our best, which would be another exercise. So when you look at the do and the don't, think of one person in your life for whom you're committed to having the strength such that you can show up and show them what it looks like,

to your brilliant point that you've got to show your kids what it looks like to show up in the face of challenges and to do your best, even when you don't feel like it. Again, I'm saying a lot. But fear and laziness are two really powerful frames that we want to be mindful of and then do our best to conquer. The back of my mind, I still thought of when you said 400 sessions with Phil. 400 sessions. Was he like your paid therapist?

Did you pay him to be your therapist? Or how did this relationship start? Yep. So I read the tools whenever it came out, 2012, I think, 10, 11, 12 years ago. Best book I'd ever read. Absolutely loved it. I bought copies for everybody on our team, the time maybe like 10, 15 people, sent them to some of my friends. One of my buddies is a guy named Triplinear. Triplineer interviews different people. He interviewed Phil. So then I wanted to do some interviews. I'm like, hey, dude, I know you interviewed Phil. I want to interview Phil and Barry and Barry, and Barry, his co-author.

So then I interview Phil and Barry, hit it off with him when I'm like, dude, I had worked with another coach for a while I was ready for a new coach. And then I had to decide which one I wanted to work with, you know, Phil and Barry, they're both amazing. but I'm like, in that model, Phil is Barry's mentor. I'm like, you got to go with Yoda, right? So I picked Phil, and then we work together every single week. We have for the last eight years. We worked together twice a week for two years. So he's just been, he's a national treasure.

Like, I'm thrilled that Jonah's shined a bright light on him, but he's a good one who has profoundly influenced me. And, you know, I take my craft seriously, both as a philosopher, as a writer, as a teacher, as a leader. And, you know, peak performers who want to be at their best, hire the best in the world to coach him to get there. And I consider him the absolute best. Wow. Because there's some in your level to say, like, I'm doing the work myself.

I'm reading. I'm filming all the time. I'm helping all these people. I'm good. You, though, say, no, I am a constant work. It feels like, I'm not trying to put words your mouth, but it feels like I am a constant work in progress. I need to invest in myself by hiring others to help me. Is that, like, how you view it?

100% I mean I've always had a coach for the last always had a coach 15 15 years you know I mean and again I'm I think it's hard to find a great coach that's a whole other conversation and I have really high standards of the individuals that are at the risk of being a modest worthy of being in that intimate relationship with me and that I really want to be in relationship with Steve Chandler is another great human being I worked with him for three years absolutely love him took a little break and then came back and started working with Phil but again, you look at any world-class, and I have unapologetic ambition of what I want to do. And in order to do that, I got to squeeze every ounce of potential out of myself as possible.

So when I connected with Phil and I could, in our first session, dude, my first session, and I've taken notes on every single session, it's a stack of papers this tall. I don't keep anything. I'm a bit of a hermit and I just don't keep things. It's my most prize possession outside of some family stuff. the very first page of notes you and I could talk about for a month what he taught me on the first page of notes which I scanned and I've got looking at me right now from the corner of my desk and again I think it's exciting and I'm thinking of golfers and one of the metaphors he's used

for me is that there's something about a coach who can just move you just a quarter of an inch you know what I mean to just help you feel that that slight subtle shift but when you are in that everything changes. And we've done that so many times together that it's this, it's hard to put into words, the power of the clarity that I have gained from him. And again, I've done a lot of work. I've read a lot of stuff. But when he and I are talking, and he's believable as well. He's helped a lot of people go from very good to enduring greatness.

And again, good coaches do that for us, where it's like, I don't even think about things. After I had an intuition, I was pretty sure. And he and I talk about it, done. And then I'm just all in. Theory to practice. not thinking about it anymore. I'm not wondering, I'm executing. And I have done that.

I don't even know how many times, which is why it's been a sacred opportunity for me to spend so much time with him. And yeah. Can you take us inside a one-on-one, because you do this for others as well, a one-on-one coaching conversation. Does the coach, I'm just curious if what they're good at, are they great at asking questions? I've got to imagine they've got to be a great listener. They are trying to pull it.

It's like a great mentor, right? They pull it out of you by asking great questions and being thoughtful and caring and having love for you. Can you just take us inside what it sounds like, what it looks like a one-on-one coaching conversation with maybe one of the greatest in the world that you've been with now for more than decade? Yep. I think that I think the number one thing is a coach has believable hope and can see your future with you. And again, we all have ambitions, some of which we're willing to share publicly and others were not. But I think a great coach can see your potential with you and can believably hold that potential with you and then fiercely support you in achieving that. And that's what I've gotten from Phil.

And this is where it's, you know, again, it's hard to put into words, but like a Bob Rotella is another great coach. So how champions think. He talks about LeBron James, you know. LeBron James always knew he wanted to be the greatest all-time basketball player. Well, first and foremost, that's an audacious thing for anyone to say out loud, right? But that's what he loved most about him. He wanted to be exceptional. So all of us here today need to embrace our ambition. What I found in Phil is unapologetically, again, what are you waiting for? We can live kind of a mediocre average life or you can be honest by yourself what you really want. This is who I really am, what I want to see, what I want to create in my life with my spouse,

my kids, if you have them, etc. What I found was Phil was able to create the space with me and he pushes me further than I even imagined and has given me practical skills and encouragement to continue to do that. And that's what I aspire to do with the individuals that I'm blessed to coach. And again, we've 10,000 people have gone through our coach certification program. And that's the number one thing I tell them. But you know what? You can't give that to someone unless you're living it, which is my number one thing to

anyone who wants to be a leader or a coach is you have to be the living embodiment of your philosophy, not mine, but yours. And then there's amazing stats on hope, for example, knowing that you do so much important work with leaders. If your team doesn't feel hope, if you haven't created a vision of a better future and shown your team that you all can create it together, engagement will go from something like 1% to 69%. The stats are insane. A hopeless organization has almost no engagement. So the number one job of a leader from my vantage point, and that Phil has done for me as a coach in my one-on-one work, but that we all need to do for ourselves and for our teams is create hope.

We've got to see a better future. And then we've got to have a sense of agency that we can create it. Then we've got to have a plan that's believable. And again, we need to be believable that we can lead the team to execute that. He's done that for me one-on-one, but that's the number one thing I'm trying to do with our community individually and that I think we all can and must do as leaders and aspirational leaders and everything that the role is we play in our lives.

I'm curious about your business and what you look for a member of your team. Obviously, they have to have certain skills from a competency's perspective for whatever it is the thing they're doing. If they're an accountant, they got to have all that certification and be good at that. But beyond those skills, when you're hiring somebody, what are some of the must-have qualities in a person for them to get hired onto your team? Soul force. I want someone who has that activated commitment to something.

bigger than themselves, who's aligned with our vision and our mission and our philosophy. And in the app, we actually, you hit certain targets and you build up what's called a soul force score. Maintaining a soul force score at 100 in one, which is the peak is a requirement for individuals on our team where they're committed to showing up as their best and their energy, their work, and their love. And, you know, we're blessed to have way over 100 applications for every seat we ever say to our community, hey, we're hiring.

So we want people that are committed to our members. mission that are committed to themselves and playing their roles humbly yet heroically well in service to that mission. And just that alignment culturally of individuals that are truly passionate about making a difference in the world via our public benefit cooperation is really important to me and having those high standards that we're all committed to executing against. It's a lot more fun to work with people that are committed to showing up with a deep level of energy and productivity and connection.

And that's what we look for. And what we're excited about is we look forward, the corporate world. That's how we're going to change the world. And we've done research where we can help people move from the 53rd percentile to the 70th in a corporate environment, never having heard of me or heroic or our work in 30 days. We can help people move from a three, give a little boost in energy to 23 percent more energized in 30 days. By doing the things that we're talking about right now, again, simple behavioral change. changes. We want a team that's committed to those ideas because we know how much it improves performance, engagement, and just overall fun and joy at work, you know?

Let's say you're meeting with somebody who's earlier in their career. Maybe these are people applying to work for you, but they say, Brian, I love your stuff. I love what you've done. I love your mission. And I recently graduated from college. I want to do good in the world. I want to make a difference. I want to leave an impact, but I don't really know what I want to do. This is a common place for a lot of younger people. That definitely was a place for me. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you give to that person? I would talk about all the things we just discussed.

Another frame to answer is if I can go back and talk to myself, at that point, I was right there. I went to law school, dropped out of law school, did all the things that one does when they're figuring their lives out. I'd go back to the basic fundamentals. I'd walk them through the seven objectives. And that's part of the reason I wrote the book is, boom, this is the best of what I know. But I would want to make sure that I understood and one understands the ultimate game, to be your best self and services something bigger than yourself. Then you got to know how to forge anti-fragile confidence, right?

And then, okay, well, who are you at your best in the past? And I'd get their soul force dialed in. And the more clarity, the more energy we have and then the more commitment we have to figuring it out, while doing our best day in and day out, outperforming our current contracts, whatever it is we're doing right now, be the absolute best at that. And again, it's a truism, but it's so powerful. And again, there's so many other details we can talk about. But I would start with that, really become a master in the art of living while you get more clarity on the specifics of what your mission might be. Experiment a ton. Obviously, at that stage, that's the whole point,

is, you know, all life is an experiment. The more the better, Ralph Waldo Emerson says, using all the data to get a little bit more clarity day in and day out. But I would emphasize, the fundamentals, getting your energy dialed in such that prior best becomes your new baseline. And my God, if I can go back and rewind time 25 years and live this stuff, which is part of where my enthusiasm comes, is I can do that before I figured a lot of this stuff out. My goodness, it's just, it's so fun and exciting to imagine what we can do is we all come alive, you know? So cool, man. The book's called Arate, Activate Your Heroic Potential. Brian, we could go for days and days. So I would love to do a round two with you at some point because I really appreciate

how thoughtful and reflective and intentional you are. And I don't use those words lightly because I think it's very rare, but it's evidence and obvious when somebody is. And I think that's certainly the case with you, man. Dude, I appreciate it. Loved our chat. I agree. We can go forever. We'd sign up round to whenever you are. I appreciate it. Where would you send everybody to learn more about you online. Yeah, heroic.us in general and dot us slash book for the book. Again, our big thing right now is R-a-November 14th. Book comes out, super excited about it.

And then the app, heroic. Us in the whatever that is, app store, Android, iPhone, et cetera, are some good ways to get going. Gotcha, man. Well, as I said, I am excited about continuing our dialogue as we both the rest. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much, man. Me too.

And to reflect back to you, I appreciate your calm, confidence, your presence, your support, your charisma, and just your graciousness in our chat today. So I look forward to the next one. Thanks so much, man. That means a lot.

Appreciate it. It is the end of the podcast club. If you are a member of the end of the podcast club, send me a note, Ryan at LearningLeader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Brian Johnson.

A few takeaways from my notes. first charisma equals presence power and warmth we have to show up we have to be fully there in that moment with a person right in front of us we're not looking over their shoulder we're right there with them in the moment then we flip the switch we understand our power we deeply care for other people we be warm not cold and it's important that each of these are expressed with authenticity charisma is something that can be learned it is a skill if we're willing to work on it. Then how do we develop our personal protocol? A simple exercise, get a sheet of paper, on one side, write do, on the other side, write don't. And think of yourself when you're at your

best. What do you do? That becomes your protocol. And remember that the worse we feel, the more we need to be committed to our personal protocol. And I love the mentality that it's always day one. Brian thinks of his time spent with the Navy SEALs. They work to earn their trident every single day. Today is the day. It's always the right day to earn it. It's always day one. Once again, I'm saying thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a

friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show with Brian Johnson. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to go to Ryanhawk.net, which launches you into Apple Podcasts and once you're there you write a thoughtful review and you rate the show hopefully five stars by doing that you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful thank you so so much talk to you soon can't wait