Mastery of Mind and Body: Pathways to Personal Excellence | Brian Johnson

29:13So, okay, so anti-fragile confidence. You were speaking about this, and this is a topic you speak about quite a bit. It reminds me of Nassim Taleb's anti-fragile. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody else has made that connection before. Yeah, so we define two different terms, right? Anti-fragile and confidence. So Nassim Taleb, I realize I've always mispronounced that, but is the one who coined the word anti-fragility. So again, we think of resiliency, but I love the spectrum where you can be fragile, life hits you, you break. You can be resilient, life hits you, you can withstand more pressure, you break down, you bounce back faster.

29:51But as Nassim says, what's the opposite of fragility? What if when you get hit? What if when you lose a chess match? What if when you lose a job or you have a health challenge, you use that stimuli and that challenge to get stronger? That's anti-fragility. And the metaphor he uses is a wind will extinguish a candle, but it will fuel a fire. So my question is, which are you? Are you a candle or are you a fire? how can you train yourself to use the thing that used to break you to make you stronger it's like going to the gym you lift real weights you're not lifting styrofoam weights now of course there's a practice to that which leads us to confidence so anti-fragility as a concept is as i described it confidence etymologically the word confidence comes from the two latin words which i will now mispronounce confidere right intense trust is what confidence is intense trust that things are going to go perfectly of course not that you have what it takes to meet whatever life throws at you so then my question is how do you build intense trust in any relationship if if you and i want to build trust then we need to do what we say we will do if i don't do what i say i will do you shouldn't trust me.

31:04Well, I like to say, if you don't do what you say you will do, you shouldn't trust yourself. If you say you're going to meditate and move a certain way and eat a certain way and be with your family in a certain way, and you consistently aren't, then you're eroding your trust and you shouldn't have an intense level of trust in yourself. Now stated positively, when you get clear on who you are at your best, you make those commitments to do those things, you earn your own trust. And that's the heart of everything I do is forging anti-fragile confidence by helping people get clarity on who they are at their best and then make that prior best their new baseline.

31:43That's a Josh Waitzkin phrase. Make your prior best your new baseline. Too many people give away their gains. They've performed at a high level, but then they forget what they did at those moments and they're constantly going forward and then back. So what I like to do is help people architect that protocol and then execute it more and more consistently. Well, and I want to hear how you do that, but I want to say that's really true. Like the time where you have, where you could potentially lose the most money is right after you make the most money. Like right after you sell your business, that's the one year period you've got to watch out for losing all your money?

32:21Because you stopped performing at that high peak level. And so, okay, so how do you kind of keep that protocol in place? Yeah, well, first thing you got to recognize is the importance of a protocol. So in my talk, there's a few different themes that I kind of use to structure it. I'll quickly touch on a couple, then I'll get to the protocol. So the first SOF, Special Operations Forces, the first soft truth is that people are more important than hardware, right? And that was the theme of the event. So I had a slide up saying that the first soft truth, people, these special forces operators are more important than the hardware.

32:59Perfect. But then I say the first life truth is the ultimate war isn't outside of ourselves. The ultimate game isn't outside of ourselves. It's in our own head. So we've got to train ourselves to play that game well, to win that war. Then you look at it and you come back to the protocol. So the way I like to frame it up is Atul Gawande, you know, in the checklist manifesto, he talks about the fact that you would never get on a plane if the pilot didn't run through a checklist, period. It would never happen. They have a systematic checklist they go through to make sure the plane is ready to be taken off into flight.

33:36Well, he learned that surgical teams that don't have a checklist of the most mundane things. Hey, my name is so-and-so. We're operating on this part of the body, blah, blah, blah. The teams that don't have checklists kill 47 % more people than people who have checklists. So in that moment, I'm like, I continue the theme with, well, you need a checklist. You as a warrior have a checklist. If I'm so calm, you have a checklist for the war you're fighting out there, but do you have a checklist to help the human being win the war within their mind? And then do you as a chess player have a fundamental protocol and checklist that you execute, especially when you don't feel like it.

34:18And that's the trick. That's really important, by the way, especially when you don't feel like it. Dude. So, so my coach is a guy named Phil Stutz. Who's one of my, my few living heroes on the wall. Love Phil Stutz. Love the book, The Tools. We had Barry Michaels on the podcast. Phil couldn't make it, unfortunately, but love his stuff. Oh, okay, cool. We'll need to see if we can circle back and get him on. Phil is my spiritual father. I've done 400 one-on-one coaching sessions with Phil over the last, we're now in our eighth year. In one of our early sessions, he complimented me on emotional stamina.

34:51He said, dude, he said, Brian, you have a lot of emotional stamina, perhaps more than I've ever seen is what he said. Very end of our chat. I'm like, well, that's awesome. I have no idea what emotional stamina is, but cool. Go me. Next session, what's emotional stamina? And he said that it's basically my ability to tolerate pain, uncertainty, and hard work, his three unavoidables in life. And then following one question, how do I get more of it? So how can I cultivate that emotional stamina, which I now call evolved into anti-fragile confidence. And what he told me is, is tattooed on my brain, which is you need to have a protocol such that the worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol.

35:33So when you were feeling hammered by life, that's when you need to be most committed to doing the things you do when you're at your best. Now, the old me and most people and me when I'm not at my best, when I get hit, I want to go do all the numbing things, all the things that invite the circus into town that I know I shouldn't be doing. But now when I get hit, that becomes an opportunity to focus on my protocol with even more ferocity. It's what Magnus does that one of the things he does that allows him to respond to a laws. He, I, boom, he knows that now's the time to step it up in every regard.

36:08Um, so that algorithm of the worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol is the essence of anti-fragile confidence, but it presupposes you have a protocol. It presupposes you have identified your checklist of the things you do when you're at your best. And that's what I try to help people get clarity on. So give me an example of someone you've helped who you help build their checklist. It could be a business guy, it could be a sports guy, it could be a creative. Like, give me an example of an unusual protocol you help someone develop. Yeah, I mean, I can share my own with you. Yeah.

36:43Basically, the app is all about this. So the app is all about Help Heroic, helping you get clarity on your protocol. One of the objectives in the book is you got to simplify self-development into what I call the big three. So that's one of the big things we do is you got to know who you are at your best in your energy, your work, and your love. And then you can systematically architect your life. So you're doing the things that keep you plugged in when you're at your best energy wise. You know, one of one of my favorite human beings on the planet has become a dear friend. One of our coaches that we've trained was the hitting coach for the New York Yankees, guy named Sean Casey.

37:22He's got a protocol where he steps up and every day he's doing certain things in his energy, certain things for his work, and then certain things for his love. And they're basic, basic fundamental things. So for me, for example, sleep is my number one thing. I used to be up and down for a range of reasons, but my number one thing is sleep. I agree with that. And I think that's become a lot more understood, particularly in the personal improvement community, that sleep is critical. Arianna Huffington wrote a book about sleep. yeah uh sean stevenson who runs the yeah of course model health podcast wrote a book about sleep very valuable i think people know this part not to okay cool no no so my question is and my challenge is perfect you know it do you do it we got to move from theory to practice to mastery so every single day i recommit to being a certain type of human being we can talk more about identities and how important that is.

38:20But I'm in bed for nine to 10 hours a night. So I get my eight to nine hours of sleep per night because 90 % efficiency is obviously very, very good. And then I'm meditating. I train my mind for 15, 30. Don't do 60 minutes anymore. Those were nice days. And then I'm moving. That's funny. That's like my path as well with meditation. Like I used to do 60 minutes. Now I don't do 60 minutes. Let's put it that way. Exactly. Perfect. But we have basic things. And my challenge is if I can help you get clarity on what you do at your best, and then I can get you to recommit to doing that, not on New Year's Eve, but every single day, I call that new days resolutions are much better than New Year's resolutions.

39:02And if you know what you do when you're at your best in your energy, your work, and your love, three simple things in each, and you do them, good luck having a really bad day. You'll have challenges. You'll have off days, of course, because you're human, but your highs will get higher and your lows will get higher. So it's taking the simple, obvious stuff, making a checklist out of it, a protocol out of it, and then doing it, especially when you don't feel like doing it. Then the things that used to hit you and knock you off and break you down literally become the things that make you stronger.

39:34That's the essence of anti-fragile confidence. Those are some general principles we use to help people get clarity.

39:56Well, let's talk about Sean Casey. So he's got his kind of life protocol. Okay. I'm going to sleep, exercise, nutrition. What would, let's get more specific with him. Does he have a protocol that he helps people develop for when you're actually at bat one minute from now the pitcher is going to be pitching and and what's your checklist for about dude okay cool well uh i can tell you that that box you received the vip box sean casey got that the new york yankees got that on the last day of the season right and then he shared what he shared with them in the last talk he gave him but what he told him was here's the book by my buddy who does this and this and this and Arate it's what you did to get here you got to the Yankees because you live with Arate you close the gap between who you're capable being who you're actually being we need you to do it off the field in the offseason etc the specifics of what Sean has people do I can't speak to but I can tell you that they do the exact same thing every time there's a basal ganglia programmed I'm not thinking about it every moment is the same for me every moment is my you know game seven bases loaded i'm the guy that needs to get a hit every single moment i'm approaching with an intensity i'm playing this at bat like it is the most important at bat i'm ever going to have in this pitch more more importantly and i'm working my process i'm working that protocol so i can't tell you the three things he has them do but i can tell you he has them do those three things and i can also tell you that he shares the same philosophy in terms of it can't happen in the three seconds before the pitch comes in.

41:35You better have lived in integrity with your values, in your eating, your moving, your sleeping, your breathing, your focusing, in your family life, in order to show up in that moment and give your best. But there's the ritualistic, I mean, this is Robert Greene again. I mean, it's the true master who makes the ultimate craft their life. This is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In his book, Creativity, he says the thing you should study with these great creators is how they created their lives. It's exactly what Robert says in mastery. So architecting our lives such that we're connected to our best selves, such that that version of us comes through.

42:13And when the, you know, the Greeks called that when you live with Orate, you experience the summum bonum, the highest good of life, eudaimonia. That means etymologically, it's good soul, you daimon. So the daimon is your guiding spirit. The diminutive of daimon is demon. Demon is the voice in your head that when you lose a chess game comes on the airwaves. Well, we need to be able to step back, see that and run an algorithm. If this, then that. If that voice comes up, then I immediately do this because that's Stephen Pressfield's resistance. That's Phil Stutz's part X. It's an inevitable part of life and you better have a plan of what you're going to do when that voice comes up.

42:57But it's exciting, you know, and we can kind of frame it all up and create the awareness, have the wisdom to know the game we're playing, and then the discipline to play it day in and day out, especially again, to repeat myself deliberately when we don't feel like it, right? Yeah. And again, I love the idea that you add when you don't feel like it? Because most of the time, you don't feel like doing things. Like, look, if I could choose, you know, I do a lot of things. I do a podcast. I work on different businesses. I'm an investor. Obviously, I spend hours either writing or playing chess. But a lot of times, I don't feel like doing some of these things.

43:42And you have to do it. The world does not care if you don't feel like doing it. It's not going to reward. I don't feel like doing it. And if you can get the pleasures of the things you're doing, you got to do it with or without whether you're motivated or not. Yep, 100%. And then, you know, some of my best days now are the days that I showed up, you know, and I didn't have it. But it's that first 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds, right? So it's harder than we'd like it to be, but not as hard as we think it will be. but then just making that again none of us are perfect i'm certainly not there are no perfect human beings etc but even getting 5 10 15 percent better at this is life-changing fully life-changing you know part of what's exciting about what we're doing is the this these ideas help the most elite performers go to the next next level and they also help people who don't know if they want to live another life go to a place of having a more deep sustainable meaning um which frankly is part of of what gives my life so much meaning.

44:47What's a story where kind of you work with somebody and it really, these ideas and the other ideas in your book, I mean, again, you have 451 ideas or chapters in this book and it's beautiful, all the stories. You really have almost like the Robert Greene style where you mix kind of the stories with the concepts. What's a life that you feel you've really changed and upped their game? Wow. I'm blessed to serve a lot of the elite performers, which we've already talked about. But, you know, we've had a number of individuals who literally plan to end their life. You know, literally, I can imagine a couple of women in particular right now who share their stories, who somehow found us, somehow found a connection to it and started practicing these ideas.

45:33And we haven't talked about the ultimate game and getting out of the extrinsic motivation. but just seeing that life is about more than what we've been seduced to believe it's about. But having individuals find meaning in their lives and to have been supported by my work is deeply meaningful. I'm not giving you a good story to go with that per se, but that's been helpful. I'm sorry. Talk about the difference between extrinsic motivation and the real game. Yeah. So then the context in which I talk about that is objective one of the book. So I like to start by saying you got to know the ultimate game.

46:10And this is a 2 ,500-year-old challenge. We have been seduced to play the wrong game. We've been seduced to go after the fame, the wealth, the hotness, the extrinsic motivators. And that's a 2 ,500-year-old challenge. That's not new, but it's amplified to the highest degree right now. And scientists are unequivocal that even if you are successfully pursuing the extrinsic stuff, you are less quote psychologically stable than people who are predominantly pursuing the intrinsic motivators of becoming a better person deepening relationships and making a contribution to your community independent of being globally recognized and having a lot of instagram followers and all the other things nothing wrong with the extrinsic obviously and in fact it's very important but we need our orientation to be predominantly focused on the intrinsic that's the ultimate game as I see it.

47:05And again, this is what we use chess for with Emerson. The chess is like the secondary game that has given us a context to win the ultimate game, to show up and be his best self, such that he can perform in a game he really enjoys. But there's something fun about stepping back a bit and seeing it from that broader perspective and then showing up with an intensity and a commitment to being your best self in service to something bigger than yourself. It's interesting with this. It feels like when I'm reading this book, you've read basically every personal development book on the planet, it seems.

47:44You have so many, I mean, I have as well, in part because many of these people have been guests on the podcast over the past nine years. But talk about some of the things you've learned. You have so many stories in the book. Again, I don't know where to begin. That's the problem with the book with 451 chapters. Like I want to talk about every chapter, but obviously that's not possible. If I open just a random thing, there's Hal Elrod. He just was on the podcast. There's, you know, okay, I don't know this guy, David Reynolds, Constructive Living. Yeah, geez. So Dan Millman. So one of the things I do, Joseph Campbell said, one of my heroes on my wall back there, the great hero mythologist, of course.

48:20He says, when you find an author who grabs you, read everything they've written and then read everything that they read that influenced them. So that struck me. I agree with that completely. Yeah. So that's kind of been my strategy, you know, of like you find an author that grabs you. So one of the first authors that grabbed me was Dan Millman. I read Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which was probably the second self-development book I read after Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And I just loved it. So then I read everything that he wrote. And this is actually funny. It comes back to chess.

48:50So I read everything he wrote. And then I paid him like$100 to do one-on-one coaching with him forever ago, like 20 years ago or more, you know. I just wanted to say hi. He's like, all right, what do you want to do? I'm like, I just want to say hi. You're awesome. You know, let's go. He's coming to the town in LA where I was living like the next week. So I'm like, well, let's connect. I pick him up from the airport. We play chess. Literally, there's the chess connection there. But he introduced me to David Reynolds. So David Reynolds is one of Dan Millman's biggest influences. David Reynolds, no one's heard of him.

49:22No one's heard of his book. It's called Constructive Living. It's a brilliant book. He's a Zen therapist, a Zen therapist. And his big message there is that your behaviors drive your feelings more than the other way around. And literally, he's the one who says, what is not feeling like and have to do with it? You know, you've decided to do something. Now what needs to be done? Don't let your feelings drive your behaviors. Let your identity drive your behaviors, which will drive your feelings. and I've architected my entire life's philosophy around that. Get clear on who you are at your best, do what needs to get done, whether you feel like it or not and let the feelings follow.

50:03So that's David Reynolds, just Constructive Living is like really short, profound book that I talk about in the context of that chapter. What does he mean by Constructive Living? Meaning mindfully, deliberately, consciously and his main thing is now what needs to get done now what needs to get done now what needs to get done that's the question you need to ask yourself not how am i feeling about this but now what needs to get done i extended that into targeted thinking so when i feel overwhelmed or i'm feeling frustrated with my my kids and and whatever um stepping back when i can between the stimulus in the response and choosing a better response, I like to say, what do I want?

50:49In any given situation, I want to set a clear target. And then what do I need to do to get that? And it's, again, one of the things I teach Emerson to deal with the negative voices. All right, well, what do you want? I want to learn from this. All right, well, what do you need to do in order to do that? But that's his basic idea and what I think he's getting at when he's talking about constructive living. let's talk about for a second what you what you just said you tell emerson what if emerson said what i want to do is win you kind of have to extend that he's a competitive dude i mean he wants to win no question but he knows that that he can't win every time period and he knows how many times magnus has lost he watched a car who play and he didn't play well in the last tournament perfect that's part of the deal that a lost one i mean it's amazing how quickly he's like it is what it is you know um and uh it's hard to put into words man how powerful that is because it's like it's such a foreign idea to me wait you can actually really get that without having to like convince you of it you know and i've been carol dweck is my biggest parenting influence so i read her stuff before we had kids and her idea of the growth mindset and self theories two of her books that I talk about in this book are my parenting guidebook.

52:08So since they were born, I have constantly said that the only way you get good at anything is what? Practice. Why are mistakes good? Because that's the only way you learn. Literally, whenever I make a mistake that's just obnoxious and just silly, I'll go, oh, shoot, I was almost the first perfect person. and they giggle. And I'm like, oh no, I've made 1 ,722 ,648 mistakes. Isn't that funny? Why are mistakes good? Because that's the only way you learn. So we've just tried to create this culture and consciousness where it's the default, you know? So I didn't answer your question, but it's almost surreal how it hasn't required as heavy of a lift as you would think it would, You know, it's interesting, the fixed mindset, growth mindset, time that into parenting.

52:58It's also like what I consider the sequel to Carol's book, Mindset, is Angelo Duckworth's book, Grit. And, you know, that kind of takes it one step further, which is, okay, get that growth mindset. But then, like you say, you're going to fail. What type of person keeps going? Yep. Yeah. And then passion, perseverance. and then it's so cool you said that because even when we were talking about what it means to be a prodigy, so one of the things I've taught Emerson, and if he was here right now, we'd have this chat, she says that her formula for achievement, she says that effort counts twice. So what I've taught him and we've talked about a million times is talent matters and talent she defines as the speed with which you can cultivate skill.

53:47So talent times effort equals skill. And then skill times effort equals achievement, right? So effort counts twice. But then he extended it. We were doing a little video for our community, you know, because people like hearing from him and all that. So he was doing it after we did a tournament, right? And I'm always trying to emphasize that it's not his talent. We like to talk about his. Yeah, he has a fast brain and it seems to work well with chess. but it's your effort you're putting in that is squeezing the talent into skill. And then the further effort you put in is what's allowing you to achieve.

54:22But when I did it with him, he missed a couple of little takes. We were doing our third take on it, right? And I said, hey, buddy, what does Angela Duckworth say about how you do things? And he said, talent times effort equals skill. And then he said, skill times effort equals achievement. And then he just spontaneously said, and achievement times more effort equals mastery. and he wants to be a grandmaster. That's his unequivocal ambition. So that idea of bringing effort into it is the number one thing that I got out of Angela Duckworth saying, which again is, well, what do you want? And then what do you need to do?

54:57And the answer is never think about it more, you know, and avoid the hard things. It's lean in to rule number one. It's supposed to be hard. And we need you to do what you need to do, whether you feel like it or not, you know? So it's so important that appreciating the word do, because, you know, thinking, thinking won't make anyone a better basketball player. I always tell people, you got to like get there at five in the morning every day and shoot baskets. Like you have to do stuff. And it's the same thing even with writing. Like you could think all you want about, oh, this is what my story is.

55:33This is, but unless you start writing, you're not writing, you're not getting better at writing. in somerset mon you know stephen pressfield has that great quote from him of hey do you write uh only when you're inspired or how do you do it and his answer of course is i only write when i'm inspired thankfully inspiration strikes at 9 a.m every morning so but that's a protocol that's a checklist that's stephen pressfield you got to create the conditions such that the muse the daimon, your genius, which is simply the Roman take on the Greek daimon. Genius and daimon are the same thing, just Greek and Roman.

56:10So we got to do everything we can to create the conditions such that the best version of ourselves can come through. That's my life's work. Like that's arete in a word. But that's what we're talking about with these checklists and the protocol and the margins, whether it's chess or business or relationships or special forces operators. um uh yeah so let's let's build my checklist a little bit so sleep eight hours a day but but it was interesting what you said you're in bed nine to ten hours a day because then you know you'll get that eight hours of sleep yeah so i use an aura ring um you know to track it if one uses a fitness or whatever tracker there's a 90 efficiency is very very good you know 80 85 you want to be 85 90 but 90 plus is like world class so if you wanted nine hours of sleep to use round math and 90 efficiency would demand 10 hours in bed to get the nine hours of sleep um and again you different people have different standards but i talked about this it's so calm too sleep the seven plus hours of sleep that are recommended the odds that you are the type of person because of some genetic mutation that you can get by on less than seven to eight hours of sleep are the same as the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime, which are surprisingly high, by the way, one in 11 ,000, you know, but anyway, sleep is important, but, but step back for a second, because the first thing I have people do is a very simple exercise to get clarity on their protocol.

57:41Take out a single piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, write do on the upper left and don't on the upper right, then think back to a time in your life when you were at your absolute best. So when you were performing at your best, and it could be a day, a week, a month, a year, even a decade, and then think about what were you doing and what were you not doing? And then look at your current life and look at the things that you did at your best you're not currently doing and you didn't do when you're at your best that you are currently doing. Circle one thing in the do one thing and the don't.

58:18That's the fastest way. And stopping the thing, the kryptonite you're doing right now is the fastest way to change your life. Then the layer below that is, I have you do the same thing in energy, work, and love, what we call the big three. So what do you do when you're at your best energy, work, and love wise? And I want to know the top three things in those categories. And then I want you to get clarity on that, commit to it every morning, and then do those top three things and then come back to me in 30 days and tell me how you did. You create a scaffolding in your life that buttresses you against life's worst challenges.

58:54And again, you do those things, especially when you don't feel like doing those things. Whereas in the past, you may have stopped doing those things and that's when you went off the rails. But that's how I would encourage one to get more clarity on the protocol, do's and don'ts. But yeah, if we wanted to architect your checklist now, I'd want to know what three things do you do to keep yourself at your best in your energy? You know, and you're right. It's probably not enough. So, okay. I attempt to sleep eight hours a day. Last night I did it, the night before, the night before I didn't. And it's got to be more consistent.

59:31Like I, the best, when I've been at my best, I go to sleep around 8.30. I wake up at five. That's when I've been at my best. Now it's a little harder to do that for, for, and I can't give excuses. There's really no reason why I shouldn't do that. Nutrition. I tend to eat about one and a half meals a day, all nutritious food. You know, as I want to say as organic as possible, but I use Uber Eats, so I don't fully know. And, But I think I do pretty well there. And exercise, I'm probably not as good as I should be. So I'll exercise maybe 10 minutes a day. You know, I try to lift weights, but with barbells that are sitting here in my office, I do a bunch of pushups, but I don't do like 30 burpees like your son's doing.

1:00:23And I don't go to the gym. I mean, there's a role for exercise, but I probably don't do it enough. Do we get a hundred points on your chest rating coming just from stepping up your exercise game? Well, it's so interesting. Like I, I had the winner. So I told you I was in the tournament of state senior champions. So I was the senior slash over 50 champion of Georgia. And there was a bunch of other guys. So this grandmaster, Jesse cry, shout out to Jesse. He's also been a coach of mine. He won the tournament and I happen to know him. So he's been, like two years ago, very thin, kind of almost, no offense to him, wimpy looking guy.

1:01:07But then he started running. I think he's even been in a marathon now. And you could see he's bulked up. Like he's got muscles, you know, and his shoulders are wider. And then he won two major tournaments this past year, which was unusual for him. He's almost my age. and so that was so i've noticed that in the end another guy who won the u.s senior championship also was like built so you could see there's a difference when you have muscles you have more energy yeah and you're training again i your physiology is driving a lot more of your psychology and mental performance than you think like it's just a fact and and it works in business you think works in sales oh my god no i know it does and again there's more to it than just the fact that your brain works better when your body's working better.

1:01:56So if I'm energized and I got a great night of sleep, I'm eating well, I'm training, I can speak personally, N equals one, I perform better. If I get six and a half, seven hours of sleep, I perform at a remarkably diminished level compared to the version of me that gets eight, eight and a half plus hours of sleep, full stop. I can do things on eight and a half hours of sleep that I can't do on six and a half. Now, it doesn't mean I'm a complete incompetent, but I know what it feels like to be on. and I like doing things at the highest possible level. Therefore, I prioritize. I turn off Netflix.

1:02:25I turn off the phone. I don't care about those things. I care about feeling great tomorrow morning and being at my best. But then, yeah, business-wise and otherwise, for sure. I mean, even the intangible benefit of you feel someone in their presence when they're living in integrity with their values, which is the seventh objective in the book, is you got to activate your soul force. You got to activate your superpower. this is ancient Chinese philosophy to cultivate effortless right action, when you do that, you cultivate a moral charisma that people feel. And there's neuroscientific proof of that.

1:03:04We evolve to feel resonance in people. We want to follow those people. So absolutely. When you walk into a business meeting and you're walking in, and you're clearly a demonstration that you're living in integrity with the things you believe. Yeah. People may not be able to tell you the unconscious reasons that they're influenced by you, but there's a certain effect. And of course, you're performing better. You're in a better mood. You're friendlier. All those things come together. Yeah, that doesn't seem like a hard thing to argue over. You know what I mean? Like two versions of you, one that's well-rested and fit and feeling great and optimistic and all the other things that go with it.

1:03:41And the other that's frumpy and hungover. And well, you tell me which one's going to do better. I agree. Like in the past year and a half, for instance, I've stopped all alcohol. Now, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. Some people enjoy having a little drink here and there, but I've avoided all of that. Anything, you know, I've reduced carbs, like anything that will get in the way of my brain, I've stopped.

1:04:18you mentioned something very interesting earlier about posture and posture is almost a way to demonstrate that you're living in resonance with your values and i'll just tell you a quick story one time uh somebody took a photograph of me in a tournament and my coach lives in armenia um avatik regoria and he's been on this podcast my coach saw the photo and he sent it back to me and said, I would love to play an opponent who looks like you right in this photo. And I was slouched over. I was, you know, kind of frumpy looking and he was right. Like I was ashamed of that photo. And yeah, dude. So imagine, and this is again, Emerson walks in physiologically and also, yeah.

1:05:04I mean, you talk about the war, right? The metaphorical war that is a chess match. Well, boom, of course you want to show up as a warrior. So your guy's telling you, He looks at you and he's like, dude, his body posture sucks. His mental game must suck. He's weak. I'm going to push him. And he's going to crumble the moment things get hard. Whereas, we want to have an athlete competing at a chessboard who when things go a little bit wrong, posture gets improved. Chest up, chin down is what I tell Emerson all the time. Breathe deeply through your nose, down into your belly, exhale. In between every single move, he's breathing.

1:05:40And he's getting his posture right. you know and and those things matter again they matter in general and they matter they matter especially when the margins matter you know and when when everybody's performing at a certain level you better be doing the things that most people aren't doing if you want to go to the next level um from my vantage point um and again these are fun things these are not chores that one needs to check off of a list this is well i'm curious can i get to 2250 and then can i get to 2300 all all right, well, what price am I going to need to pay? I'm going to need to do this and this and this.

1:06:12And that's fun. What an opportunity to prove the people that told me I'm crazy wrong. What did the absolute best do? I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to do a little more. And then I'm going to be creative about it and do, again, what Tiger Woods did to golf. With Michael Jordan, I'm re-watching The Last Dance. Nobody trained before Jordan, right? And then Jordan needed to get through the piston. So all of a sudden, he put on 15 pounds season to season to deal with Detroit. And Tim Grover said, You know, why do you need big arms? And he said, what do you think the first thing people see is when he takes off his warm-up coat?

1:06:44His arms. Boom. Everything matters. There's a level of the opposite of what your coach said, you know, that people feel. And you never slouch. You never let them see you weak. When Horace Grant was complaining about getting kicked by the Bulls, Jordan pulls them up. Don't let them see you. If for a moment, look weak. I mean, there's that matador is how Jim Lohr and Tony Schwartz put it in the powerful engagement. The matador that is the tennis player that's strutting around, walking around, you're never going to see them lose that composure of them being their best selves, especially when things are going sideways.

1:07:21When everybody else spins out, they're the ones that are, we call it flipping the switch. Flip the switch, chest up, chin down, feet grounded, pull a thread through your head, something called the Alexander technique that actors are trained in, which is lengthen and widen your spine, have proper posture so you can breathe properly. And oh, by the way, a slouched posture, you're not breathing right. So your brain's not getting the oxygen you need. You're playing a competitive chess game. We need you to get oxygenated. So again, all those things matter aesthetically in terms of how your opponent's feeling your energy and just how you're feeding your brain with oxygen.

1:07:58All these things kind of add up, right? yeah absolutely so you're getting me fired up james i know i want you to be my coach now let's go i'm thinking the same thing by the way let me ask you like just about the book itself what again the the approach is very interesting it reminds me of there's there's two different styles of people who use powerpoint presentations there's one where they have like 10 slides there's let's say you're talking for an hour there's one approach where you have 10 slides and you put a lot of information on each slide and you spend time on each slide. And then there's one where you have like a hundred slides and you're going clicking every few seconds to the next slide.

1:08:36And that keeps people active and interested. Your style of book reminds me of that second style, which I think is more an interesting style, actually. What gave you the idea to basically have like an enormous number of chapters? Because that's the beauty of the book, I think. I got to tell you a funny story. So then 101 slides, that's how many slides I had. I had a 45 minute keynote with, with some Q and a, right? So I send these guys, the special forces guys, my, my presentation, like, Hey, don't worry about it. I'm going to blow through these. I like to tell a story visually. It's very aesthetic.

1:09:08You know, the book kind of Steve jobs is on my wall, you know, so I'm trying to make everything insanely great and beautiful and simplistic and minimalist. So I'm like, don't worry about it. I'm going to blow through these slides. You know what I mean? I like to let the slide tell a story, but I go through it quickly. A couple of guys come up 101 slides, you know, you realize you have 45 minutes. You're like, don't worry about it, guys. We're good. So that you brought that up is funny. And that's the style that I've learned, that I've developed organically, that I've learned to trust. And people like Steven Pressfield have really inspired me with his War of Art.

1:09:42Pablo Coelho is another writer I admire, that pithy, unpretentious, let's get in, let's get out. More wisdom and less time is also one of our themes with the work I do with Philosopher's Notes. And then I just find it fun. But I actually wrote 80 % of a normal book. So I had a normal, quote, fluffy 250 or 60 page book written. I had a deal with a top three publisher. And I walked away from it a couple of years ago, two, whatever, three years ago, because we got into an argument over 10 ,000 words. They wanted 60 to 80 ,000 words max. And I told him, look, I want to create what I hope to be a seminal book, you know, on the line of a seven habits with humility, knowing how difficult that is.

1:10:26But that's the quality of book I aspire to write. Well, that's 120 ,000 word book out the gate. It's been edited, etc. I just want some flexibility. Let me go up to 100 ,000. Hard no argument. No. Walked away from the deal. Right. Anyway, I'm so glad you did. Dude, came back. But I still had the idea that I needed to write a normal book. and I got to a point where it just, it wasn't my style to write a long form chapter that conformed to all the normal standards. And I asked my team what ideas most changed their life that I had shared with them. And you know, like 10, 15 people on our team and they all came back with different ideas, like three, five, 10, my right hand guy had like a hundred ideas, but they were all different.

1:11:11No, there were very little overlap. And I'm like, which one am I going to leave out? Because that idea changed her life and that one changed his. And then it all kind of clicked of, all right, it's going to be a different book. And then it was, well, what's the number? How many are we going to do? 300 ideas, 400 ideas, and then 451 is the degrees Fahrenheit you need to start a fire. So if you want to hit an activation energy point is the chemistry phrase, where one thing becomes another thing. So if you want to boil water, nothing happens until 212 degrees. Then one thing changes to another state.

1:11:52Fire is ignited at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Paper is ignited. So then it became, boom, it's 451. And we knew each chapter would be two to three pages. So it'd be around a thousand pages long. And then literally the book is a mashup of The War of Art by Pressfield, short, pithy, hyper-readable micro chapters and War and Peace, a dense tome. And literally when I was writing the book, I imagined the people we've talked about, the commanding military officers, the sports executives and coaches holding the book. I closed my eyes and I felt the weight of the book and I wanted it to have like a gravitas to it, yet be simultaneously hyper-readable.

1:12:34Open it anywhere, get in, get out. And then it just clicked. But even my, we partnered with a different publishing company to create our own imprint where I had complete creative autonomy and all the things. But even he's like, uh, you know, a little crazy there. I'm like, dude, perfect. We got to be willing to push here. We got to be willing to do something different. I think this is what we need to do. Um, et cetera. And I appreciate you asking because it was a fun creative process. No, it looks like a lot of fun. And really it inspired me. Like I want to do something like this. Like it's very, again, if you had written a 200 page book called Arate, I probably wouldn't even have noticed it because I feel like there's just too many blah, 200 page books about whatever personal improvement.

1:13:23But this really stood out just, you know, they say never judge a book by its cover, but you have to, because it's the only thing you see and until you open the book and just the dimensions of this book it's like a little cube and uh uh you know it's it's it's beautiful to look at and you're right it's got the right weight and there's so much like everything i want to read like you know you have all my favorite books mentioned here like here's one where here's a chapter uh where you talk about eckhart tolle on food poisoning and you put it you mentioned the power of now which is one of my all-time favorite books.

1:13:58So talk about Eckhart Tolle and the power of now and what you mentioned in here. Dude, well, let's bring it back to chess because that's kind of the consistent theme. So Eckhart Tolle, that particular idea is if you eat a certain type of food that makes you sick, at a certain point, you need to stop eating that food. You would stop eating it. If you knew that it gave you food poisoning, you'd stop eating the food. Why do you eat, in quotes, the same thoughts that make you sick. So why do you allow the same thoughts to arise, one in general, and any performer in particular, that don't help you, that make you sick?

1:14:32So getting clarity on that. And he says at some point you need to move past acceptance. Oh shoot, I'm just bound to be sick, you know, psychologically or physically. You don't do that with food. Don't do it with your thoughts. You need to move from acceptance to change. And this is where, again, the active, you got to do something about it. We got to look at that, analyze it and see what you might be able to do to improve. But that's kind of how I play with Tole's ideas on that front. And it's funny too, because I mentioned Tole another time in the book where when COVID hit, he did a talk talking about Jesus's, you know, the parable of the guy that built a house on sand versus a foundation of of rock and granite right and the basic metaphor there is protocols it's checklist if when the storms come you have not built your house on a solid foundation of course in that context was following the teachings of of um what jesus put out but but the basic metaphorical idea there is you need a solid protocol such that when the storms come you have a solid foundation on which you've built your life which of course is going to have the thoughts we're talking about the behaviors that we have control over, which to continue the theme for a moment longer is the essence of stoicism, which of course is a major theme in the book.

1:15:52My favorite ancient wisdom philosophy, you can't control what's going on. You can't control whether you want to lost the game, but you can control your thoughts and behaviors in response to those things. That's an obvious truth. Everyone knows that. But are you practicing the things you need to practice in order to be a master at that aspect of your life. That's, you know, some of the way I integrate Atole with the Stoics and other traditions, et cetera. No, that's great. I mean, you've integrated hundreds of different philosophers, both ancient and modern and very wise people. You being easily in their ranks, you know, with this book.

1:16:35So you must be very proud. when when did the book actually come out or when does it come out it just came out dude so we just released it uh november 14th so it's only been out for six weeks um you know feel just excited about it you know grateful for the support we've received and um it's volume one dude you know i'm back at it so you know god willing uh deo valente um five volumes is the vision you know so i'm back to work and oh my god what are you going to include even in the second you conclude so many ideas in this one dude i left so many out you know every day i do a different kind of um we call them a plus one and so uh yeah i mean it's 451 degrees to activate a fire but it's 2200 degrees to forge a sword so five volumes is 2255 degrees so that's just my straight line again it's it's it's robert green it's it's the path of the master you know it's the practice um so i'm excited about it and And, you know, I mean, even this chat, dude, I could write a few chapters just on what we talked about, you know, and different experiences.

1:17:40Here's a line from the SOCOM guys, right? So General Fenton, they've given me permission to talk about these things, which is why I'm explicitly asked, can I talk about this? You know, one of his lines was normal people say, oh, there's no way. Special operators say special forces operators say, oh, there's a way. That's an awesome idea. You know, there's no way. oh, there's a way. All right. Well, how are you showing up? Oh, there's no way I can do that. Oh, there's a way. I'm going to find a way to, to, I'm excited about your goal, dude. 2255. That's like, I'm personally fired up about getting there, you know, and it becomes a fun game, right?

1:18:17Yeah, no, I, I, and look, I've never too much to many people's dismay. I've never wavered in my belief that I could do this, but I guess I've been, I thought I would do it like pretty quickly and and it hasn't happened that way so that i have to battle negative self-talk that is an issue for me um but you know it's interesting you know you're talking about special forces and the ability to to say there is a way when everybody tells you there isn't a way reminds me of a video jaco willing did uh first off i love jaco's book extreme ownership that's like a philosophy of my my life and jaco has this video where he talks about you know a soldier might come up to him and says, look, we have this problem, this problem, this problem.

1:18:59And Jaco says, good. And then the soldier will say, no, no, you don't understand, but there's also this problem, this problem, this problem. And Jaco says, good. And, you know, it goes on like that a few more times. And, you know, I think really the point of the video is just hearing him say good with that confidence. But, you know, he basically concludes that, you know, just do it now. Yep. So. 100%. Yeah, and the way that I feel it, again, we're using our conversation around chess as a context for this. I look at it and go, all right, cool. So it's taking you a little bit longer than you want.

1:19:34Rule number one, it's supposed to be hard. You're on a heroic quest. That is rule number one. It's supposed to be hard. So when the hardships come, when the dragons come, we don't whine about it. We go, all right, perfect. And then I say good. I like to say perfect. Perfect. It's harder than you think. What price are you going to need to pay? So now we need to step back and go, I'm to pay a bigger price than I thought. But then I personally get excited because chess doesn't matter. Like, okay, it's fun. It's a way to challenge yourself, but why? And if we can get you to go to the next level in your energy, truly getting you up to world-class standards, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, and focusing, we're going to add 10 years to your life.

1:20:12That matters. And then we use chess and your passion for it and the price you're getting to pay to win the ultimate game, which is you being a better person, deepening relationships, making a contribution, showing us what's possible. When you set a hard, high goal, you decide, and you may decide you don't want to pay the price, which is also fine, 100 % fine. We want to know what we want, why we want it. Then we got to know what we need to pay to get it and decide whether we're going to pay it or not. Then we say good when it's hard. And that's what Jocko says. He says, it's good. I got injured.

1:20:42Good. I needed some time to recover or I needed to work out that, you know, or I got laid off. Good. Hated the job anyway. I wanted to find a better job. He always immediately alchemizes it. So good, I'm struggling to go to the next level. Looks like I'm gonna need to go to the next level in other aspects of my life in order to perform well on chess. And that's awesome because now I'm gonna benefit in all these other ways I couldn't have anticipated, right? You know, and it's fascinating because the ways you realize you need to improve your life, they're uncovered by the mistakes and the loss.

1:21:14Like you wouldn't realize this without it. So for instance, I realized I pretty much had a fixed mindset that I identified my identity in part with being 30 years ago, a successful chess player. And I had to crush my ego down so I no longer identified as that. I can't identify as that right now. I had to be aware of these things that were from an ego point of view causing me pain. And that was a life improving thing. That happens to me also when I would, on several occasions in my life, go broke. There was an ego thing going on. You have to kind of crush your ego to overcome these hardships. So now we're going to go ego on it, dude.

1:21:56So at the end of the book, I talk about the ego. I see the ego very differently. I see the ego from a psychoanalytic perspective where the ego is the healthy, integrated id and superego. So a healthy ego needs to be transcended, of course, and plugged into something bigger than ourselves. but I would offer it was your super ego that was ashamed that you weren't impressing people anymore. And it was the id that wanted everything quickly and didn't want to have to pay the price. And it was the disintegration of those two things and a disintegrated ego that didn't allow you to manage that, that we need to work on in order to have that solid base, longer, fun chat.

1:22:32But then I also go back to your 2255 peak in chess. And I would frankly do the exact opposite. I'd go David Goggins on it. And I'd say, look, cookie jar is his thing. When life hits him hard and he's failing at his Guinness World Championship pull-ups or his long race, he goes into his cookie jar and feasts on prior success. I'd reframe it. I call those hero bars. I'd go back to when you were at your best and go, that's like me. I may not be there right now, but I'm the guy who was 2255. I was crushing it. Even within these constraints, I wasn't even playing as much as these guys. and I was doing this.

1:23:11Now, knowing what I know and the price I'm going to need to pay, it's going to be so fun to close the gap between where I am and there. But I'd use that as fuel with humility of how hard it's going to be. But building up that self-image of that's like you, that's like you, that's like you. We're not attached to, you know, that in an unhealthy way. But, dude, that's like, you've been there, done that. You're a champion. My kid won the, you know, JV, it was truly JV, not the elite Texas state championship. It was the second tournament he played in. And, you know, that's like you, dude, you show up and you win.

1:23:44You're a champion. And when you don't win, I don't tell you, no, that wasn't like you. You're a loser. I said, dude, you're a winner. Let's learn from this because that's like you to bring home the biggest trophy that's bigger than you. You know, let's go, let's go, let's go. We want that self-image to be up because you won't outperform a poor self-image. That's rule number one of mental toughness in sports and if you think you suck and you aren't a good shot good luck dude then again all the asterisks but that's self-image of that's like you to perform at a really high level when it matters most and to learn when you get your butt kicked and magnus channel magnus how does he do it how does he respond to losses with a better performance i'd want to deconstruct that and um again you're getting me fired out but but those are some things that arise one thing i've notice about Magnus is that, you know, he became world champion, let's say 10 or 11 years ago.

1:24:38And he didn't rest. Cause like when I met him a few months ago, we were in Norway and I had dinner with him, his dad and his coach. He was telling me some of the things he's learned over the past few years, meaning since he's become world champion, he has continued to learn at a very deep level and he told me which of the top 10 players he didn't think knew these deeper concepts that he's learned only since he's become world champion if you imagine being world champion of something and then learning even deeper yes yes is the short answer and it was like amazing what he was saying because it almost seemed like basic things but then he would like put it in a different light and i'm like oh yeah that's really interesting but that's the best the best are focused on those basic fundamentals and that pursuit of mastery.

1:25:28I mean, this is it. It's asymptotic. Our potential is asymptotic. So he's genuinely curious and loves the game so much that it's just this incessant craft. I remember in his documentary, and that's so cool. And I'd love to see a picture with you that I can share with Emerson. But in his documentary, you know, he's being interviewed and the interviewer is asking him, well, how often do you think about chess and he's like i'm thinking about it right now you're interviewing me but part of my mind is working on it's just that beautiful healthy wonderful unapologetic obsession you know with the craft and um with the joy of mastery and knowing that we're never going to get there there's no there there you know that's that's so inspiring and so cool to imagine you all having a great dinner yeah no it was it was definitely part of this adventure of this quest so brian brian johnson arete spelled a-r-e-t-e roughly there's a little accent over the last e but you could just type in a-r-e-t-e into amazon activate your heroic potential volume one this is like right now I feel the personal improvement book like because you could you assimilate everything from all these other books and stories and your own experiences and you've got it right here this book Arate activate your heroic potential is an amazing book I'm going to take a lot of the advice in this book to heart and a lot of the stuff we just spoke about I hope we meet in person someday It'd be great.

1:27:02And, uh, if Emerson, your kid wants to play some games, I'm always, uh, I'm always open to it. Like it'd be a good practice partner for him. Dude, I would, uh, I was actually thinking that I appreciate you bringing that up. I'm excited to connect offline and, um, really inspired. I really appreciate you. I've been inspired by you and your work for, for a very long time and just who you are, how you show up. Um, you know, it's privileged to be here with you and just really enjoyed our chat. And I'm really excited to continue this conversation and deepen our friendship and just have a good feeling.

1:27:33So bless you, man. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you. So, and look, definitely work on that volume too and come on anytime. So thanks, Brian. Thanks, James.

1:27:57Thank you.