You Are Heroic with Brian Johnson

"True Surrender" = "The Art of Acquiescence" In our last couple +1s, we talked about Michael Singer and his practical wisdom. As we discussed, he has quickly become one of my favorite new teachers. He clearly practices his philosophy and his philosophy is a good one. As I was reading his latest book, I was struck by the parallels of his wisdom and Stoicism. Although they take different approaches to get there and describe the process in slightly different terms (as is typically the case with universal truths echoed across different cultures and times), they arrive at the same destination. Check this out, for example. Here's Michael Singer from Living Untethered: "One of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you." And… Here's Marcus Aurelius from his Meditations: "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." The wisest among us learn to have the wisdom and the humility to see the bigger picture and to ACCEPT REALITY. That is what Singer would call "true surrender." Byron Katie calls it "loving what is." Phil Stutz calls it "radical acceptance." The Stoics called it "the art of acquiescence" and their ENTIRE philosophy is basically predicated on EXACTLY what Singer is describing. Whatever you want to call it, let's PRACTICE IT. Today. +1. +1. +1. LET'S GO!

Opportunities to Practice In our last +1, we talked about using the WEATHER as a prompt to practice our philosophy. I shared my new favorite temperature which, as you may recall, is WHATEVER THE TEMPERATURE IS RIGHT NOW! (Hah.) (Seriously though! ) I promised we'd chat more about Michael Singer and his idea of practicing "surrendering" to reality by picking some low-hanging fruit. Here's some of his wisdom on the subject from his great (!) book Living Untethered. He tells us: "The best way to let go of stored pockets of pain is to practice. Just as you practice the scales to learn the piano or practice a sport to get good at it, you practice letting go to learn how to do it. You start with simple things. We call these low-hanging fruit. There are many situations each day when you create inner disturbance for absolutely no good reason. Bothering yourself about the car in front of you does no good at all. It only makes you tense and uptight. The cost-benefit analysis is one-hundred-percent cost and zero benefit. Letting go of that tendency should be easy, but it's not. You will find that you're in the habit of insisting and demanding that things should be the way you want, even if it's irrational. Things are the way they are because of the influences that made them that way. You are not going to change the weather by complaining about it. If you are wise, you will start to change your reactions to reality instead of fighting with reality. By doing so, you will change your relationship with yourself and with everything else." And, he says: "Start with the small things to prove to yourself that you are capable of doing this. Working with yourself at this level is practicing letting go." Let's emphasize three aspects of that passage. First, we'll talk about the importance of PRACTICE in general. Second, we'll talk about the fact that wasting our energy on trivial things that are out of our control is a 100% cost 0% benefit outcome. And, third, we'll talk about the importance of finding little things to use as part of your idiosyncratic practice in particular. Regarding practice in general… Just this morning, as I was exploring some of the quotes in the Heroic app as I committed to practicing (!) the virtue of Self-Mastery, I read a brilliant gem from Alex Korb's great book The Upward Spiral—which is all about "Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time." He tells us: "Ultimately it comes down to the most cliched but scientifically true maxim: practice, practice, practice. To create new, good habits, you have to repeat them over and over again until your brain rewires itself." And… As I was rowing after my AM1 Deep Work block, I thought of the fact that I needed to connect all this wisdom about practice to Daniel Coyle and his wisdom in his great book The Little Book of Talent. He tells us: "Repetition has a bad reputation. We tend to think of it as dull and uninspiring. But this perception is titanically wrong. Repetition is the single most powerful lever we have to improve skills, because it uses the built-in mechanism for making the wires of our brains faster and more accurate." PRACTICE. PRACTICE! PRACTICE!! It's super important. Now let's shine a spotlight on the fact that, arguing with reality is a 100% LOSING proposition. As Byron Katie says, we lose when we argue with reality. But only EVERY TIME. The cost includes not only our tension and uptightness but the LOST OPPORTUNITY to have alchemized that same trigger into an opportunity to grow. We missed the chance to turn that -1 into a +1 and then aggregate and compound all those tiny little gains into some MASSIVE change. Add up all those missed opportunities and… That gets expensive FAST! Now let's shine a spotlight on YOU and your idiosyncratic opportunities to practice. What little things bother YOU? Seriously. Think of something that a) you have no control over that b) you know you're wasting your energy getting all worked up about that c) you could use as a new prompt to practice your philosophy. What is it? Got it? Awesome. Let's stop letting ourselves get annoyed by arguing with reality over insanely trivial things that are OBVIOUSLY totally (!) out of our control. The next time that thing happens, let's NOTICE how we're getting all tense and uptight. And RELAX. Take a nice, deep breath. Then go on with your day. You just plucked some low-hanging fruit. Let's use that fruit as fuel to strengthen our ability to step in between a stimulus and our old response to choose the most empowered response as we get stronger in preparation for the inevitable bigger challenges life will give us. -1 to +1. -1 to +1. -1 to +1. All day every day. Especially TODAY.

What's Yours? Emerson just walked into my office zipping up his camo winter jacket to go with his camo pants. He told me: "It's COLD! It's 52 degrees out this morning!" Fall arrived in a hurry out here in Austin and we went from the 100's to the 90's to, for former Californians, chilly quickly! Now… Emerson and I have a new joke—which is why I replied by saying, "Oh!! 52 degrees—that's my all-time favorite temperature!" To which he laughed and said, "Dadddddddyyyyy. EVERY temperature is your favorite temperature." That's true. My favorite temperature? It's always EXACTLY what the temperature is at that moment. Which gets us a little closer to the point of Today's +1. Let's step back for a moment and set some context. Michael Singer has become one of my absolute favorite teachers. Although I very much enjoyed The Untethered Soul (check out those Notes), it wasn't until my friend Joe Okleberry sent me a picture of him and Michael that I picked up this book. Now, I didn't have to go far to pick it up as Alexandra had been raving about him for months. The book was literally on our kitchen table. With the two of them extolling his awesomeness, I decided to join the party. And, I'm very glad I did. We'll talk more about his wisdom soon. For now, as you know if you've read his stuff, THE central Big Idea to ALL of his work is, essentially, to QUIT ARGUING WITH REALITY. As he says: "Suffering is caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you want and the reality unfolding in front of you. To whatever degree they don't match, you suffer." In our next +1, we'll talk about something he calls "low-hanging fruit" that will help us PRACTICE reducing our suffering by "surrendering" to reality. For now… One of my favorite prompts to practice? The weather. Arguing with the WEATHER is one of the most ridiculous things we can do—which is why Emerson and I have that new joke. Here's the origin story… Emerson was telling me how much he loved the 80-degree-ish fall temperature here in Austin. He asked me what my favorite temperature is. I told him: "The temperature RIGHT NOW is ALWAYS my ABSOLUTE favorite." 102 degrees and Austin humid? Perfect. My all-time favorite temperature. Free sauna. 51 degree cold plunge? Perfect. My all-time favorite temperature. Rebooting the nervous system. As the Gita beautifully says: "Reshape yourself through the power of your will... Those who have conquered themselves... live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame... To such people a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same... Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights." Who knew the weather could be such a powerful tool for our armamentarium? So… What's YOUR favorite temperature? Let's quit arguing with reality and use EVERY opportunity we can to playfully practice our philosophies. +102degrees. +52degrees. And God bless those of you who live in -Xdegrees and REALLY get to practice!

Stoic Negative Visualization Part Deux Not too long ago, we talked about Happy our Rooster. He wasn't doing so well then and, I'm sorry to say, he didn't make it. We talked about Happy and his crowing in the context of remembering to practice alchemizing things that might (at least on occasion!) annoy us into reminders of just how precious the little things in life are. As you may recall, I connected that wisdom to the master class I created for Emerson on Conquering Toilet Paper 101. Today I want to continue the conversation and shine a brighter light on the ancient Stoic practice that the modern Stoic William B. Irvine describes as "negative visualization." Then I'll tell you how I practiced that when we couldn't find the kids for a few minutes yesterday. First… The Stoics. As we discussed in +1 #851, Stoic philosopher William B. Irvine wrote a great book called A Guide to the Good Life. He tells us that the Stoics "recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value—that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would. This technique—let us refer to it as negative visualization—was employed by the Stoics at least as far back as Chrysippus. It is, I think, the single most valuable technique in the Stoics' psychological tool kit." Now… I pay attention when a guy I respect as much as I respect Professor Irvine tells me that something is THE SINGLE MOST VALUABLE TECHNIQUE practiced in my preferred philosophical tool kit. Which is why I have practiced "negative visualization" since I learned of the technique years ago. And… It's why I practiced it yesterday. Which leads us to the two Johnson kids. So… As we've discussed, we live out in the country outside of Austin. We have a little bit of land and one of the first things we did when we moved in was carve out a little half-mile walking trail. I absolutely love it and I target swipe hitting the Trail 2-3+ times a day. Now… Yesterday afternoon Alexandra came into my office and said she didn't know where the kids were. They had been jumping around on the trampoline when she came inside for a few minutes and now she didn't know where they were. She had looked in the tiny house where her mom lives and they weren't there. She called for them using our secret loud call and they didn't respond. She was more than a little nervous. So… We split up to see if we could find them. I walked one way on our trail and she took a different path to see if we could find them. As I walked in my direction, I took a deep breath and deliberately allowed myself to imagine the worst possible outcomes to feel the pain of losing our kids. What if they had somehow fallen into our little pond and BOTH of them somehow couldn't get out? What if someone somehow came onto our property and abducted them or something terrible happened we couldn't imagine? That was my internal dialogue for about 15-30 seconds. Then I took another deep breath as I told myself that, however unlikely, those WERE possibilities. And that any number of other tragic things could happen at ANY time to them. Then I reminded myself that I would be wise to keep that wisdom in mind much more often as I shifted from catastrophizing to staying calm and grounded and GRATEFUL to have two beautiful, healthy, happy kids as I turned the corner on our trail. Then who did I see? Two beautiful kids walking toward me—one with his headphones on listening to an audiobook which explained why he didn't respond to his mom's call. Safe and sound—oblivious to any potential issues. They knew they had to get some exercise in so they decided to go for a walk. And now they know to let us know when they go on a walk and not to walk with headphones on so they can hear a call. And, well… That's Today's +1. If you feel so inspired, consider adding a "negative visualization" practice to YOUR Heroic toolkit. Let's remember to not take all those gifts in our lives for granted but AS GRANTED. Not someday. But Today. -1 to +1. Day 1. Let's go!

And Notice When You're Not This morning I was on the trail, listening to my 33-minute playlist of 11 of my favorite songs by my favorite band The Score while getting in my 30 minutes of movement and 15 minutes of MAF work. I had just hammered out 10 pull-ups and 100 burpees and 1,000 meters of rowing. I pulled out my bat phone, which I use to hit Heroic targets when I'm training and in Deep Work mode. Target swipe. Target swipe. Target swipe. That's like me to have 51 targets hit by the time I come online en route to 101 targets for the day!! (101 Heroic Targets a day truly do keep the daimon in play, folks! ) And… As I was putting the ol' bat phone back into the ol' pocket… I missed. The phone fell to the ground and my old-school, corded headphones got disconnected. And… The music stopped. And… That's when I knew I needed to create this +1. Want to hear the music of life? Awesome. Stay plugged in. Period. Want to more and more consistently show up as your best self? Awesome. Stay plugged in. Period. And, perhaps most importantly to achieve that… Notice when you're NOT plugged in and what you did to get disconnected. Then do whatever you need to do to get plugged back in. All day every day. Especially… TODAY. +1. +1. +1. P.S. Desmond Tutu and Richard Rohr would agree. As they say: "We are only the light bulbs, and our job is just to remain screwed in!'" P.P.S. Here's the playlist I've listened to hundreds and hundreds of times.

You Don't Rise to the Occasion, You Sink to… Continuing our tour through Brian Cain's mental toughness fables, let's talk about another Big Idea from The 10 Pillars of Mental Performance Mastery. Remember: Brian has coached an INCREDIBLE number of SUPER-ELITE athletes and coaches. Eight UFC Champions. Four Cy Young Winners. MVPs. Olympians, etc, etc., etc. One of the things he teaches them? The fact that, as he puts it: "You don't rise to the occasion, you sink to your levels of training and habits." Here's how his guide Coach Kenny puts it in the fable. He tells us: "'The key is to make your habits so strong and your training so good that when you sink to your worst day, you sink to a level higher than anyone else on their best day,' Coach Kenny said. 'It's easy to say, hard to do, and only possible if you follow the 10 pillars of mental performance mastery.'" Then he says: "'Everyone talks about raising the roof. In reality, it's about raising your basement so that you have good bad days and are better on your bad days than most people are on their good days—because you can focus better and have better habits and a more elite mindset. It's really about being the best version of you that you have ever been. It's also about not comparing yourself to anyone else but to where you were yesterday. If you can see progress—be better today than you were yesterday and better tomorrow than you are today—and just keep going baby step by baby step, you will get where you want to be.'" That's from a great chapter called "You Don't Rise to the Occasion; You Sink to Your Training and Habits." There's a LOT of wisdom in there that we could talk about for an entire weekend workshop. For now, let's focus on a few highlights and some parallel wisdom from other brilliant teachers. First, I think of this +1 on Good Bad Days in which we talk about some wisdom from Jim Afremow's The Champion's Mind. Big Idea? Golfers like Jack Nicklaus and Rory McIlroy know it's all about "playing poorly well." You can only do that when you have an elite mind. Then I think of Lanny Bassham and his son Troy who wrote With Winning in Mind and Attainment. In this +1 on Average vs. Elite, we talk about the fact that AVERAGE performers practice something until they can get it right. ELITE performers, on the other hand, practice until they CAN'T GET IT WRONG. Then there's Josh Waitzkin, the chess prodigy turned martial artist champion. In The Art of Learning, he tells us that we need to make our prior best our new baseline. What happens when we do all that? We raise the basement. Our highs are higher AND (!) our LOWS are HIGHER. On our worst days, we're often better than we used to be on our best days. And that's an incredibly powerful thing. Here's to raising our basement as we DOMINATE THE DAY and give the world all we've got, Hero. Day 1. All in. Let's go! P.S. Lest you think this is just a bunch of peak performance mumbo jumbo, let's remind ourselves of the ancient wisdom from one of the wisest of them all as we make sure we are building our lives on a solid foundation.

The Best of the Worst and Worst of the Best In our last several +1s, we've been having fun hanging out with world-class mental toughness and peak performance coach, Brian Cain. And, trust me. Any time spent with Cainer is going to be fun. He is EASILY one of the most inspiring human beings on the planet. You can't help but feel energized just being in his presence. So… Today we're going to talk about one of the lines in his little fable on The 10 Pillars of Mental Performance Mastery that jumped out at me and tattooed itself on my consciousness. It's about being average. Coach Kenny is the guide in the fable. He's coaching a burned-out executive. He tells him: "'You are like most people,' Coach Kenny said. 'And we call that average. Like I have said, I hate the word average. It means you are the best of the worst and the worst of the best. It's a terrible place to live.'" Me: Oh, snap! Average. It's the best of the worst. And the worst of the best. Stuck right there in the middle of the rugged mountain we call mediocrity. Not where we want to hang out. Brian has Coach Kenny say: "You are giving the world your B or C game and you don't even know it because you have never been trained on how to give your A game." And: "The world needs you at your best. You can't be normal, you must be elite." And: "If you don't have a plan, how are you getting better? The problem is when you stop getting better, you start getting bitter, and nobody likes being around people who are bitter all the time." Lest you think that wisdom is just some rah-rah, pom-pom waving goodness from an overly ambitious peak performance coach, how about this parallel wisdom from one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers, Eric Butterworth? As we've discussed, Butterworth was Maya Angelou's spiritual teacher. And, apparently, Oprah considers Discover the Power Within You one of her all-time favorite books. So… Here's how Butterworth puts it in one of MY all-time favorite books, Spiritual Economics. He tells us: "Why be an average person? All the great achievements of history have been made by strong individuals who refused to consult statistics or to listen to those who could prove convincingly that what they wanted to do, and in fact ultimately did do, was completely impossible." Average. It's the best of the worst and the worst of the best. As Sylvester Stallone tells us his son in Rocky IV (check out this inspiring scene!): "THAT'S NOT YOU! YOU'RE BETTER THAN THAT!!" Let's commit to getting just a little bit better today in service to something bigger than ourselves as we remind ourselves that the process of becoming the best, most Heroic version of ourselves is SUPPOSED to be challenging and that the only antidote to mediocrity is excellence. Remember: The MOMENT we live with Areté we ARE Heroic. Let's do that. Today.

Want to Get 998,822,690,009,590 Times Better? In our last +1, we talked about Brian Cain's wisdom on The 1% Intention. Let's review the math. There are 24 hours in a day. 60 minutes per hour. That's 1,440 minutes per day. 1% of that? 14 minutes and 24 seconds. 1% of your day. Here's the question: What's the #1 thing you KNOW you could be doing that, if you spent just 1% of your day doing it, would have THE most positive impact in your life? Seriously. What is it? How can YOU invest just 1% of your day into getting 1% better Today? Think about it. And… As you do, let's think about some James Clear wisdom on the subject to bring the point home—because the math is CRAZY. Actually… Before we go there… I have to say that I want your potential investment of 1% of your day into HEROIC to be (goosebumps) at least considered as one of the highest-leverage things you could do to improve your life 1%. 14 minutes and 24 seconds. Choose your own adventure with how you want to split that up in the app. Of course, you can get "more wisdom in less time" (Theory!) via these +1s, the PhilosophersNotes, 101s, Basic Training and Mastery Series to make sure you have the right strategies. And, if you feel so inspired, I think you'd be wise to consider a few minutes invested into the Target PRACTICE side of things as this will, in my opinion, always be THE HIGHEST LEVERAGE thing you can do as committing to being our best selves then actually doing the things that help us close the gap between who we're capable of being and who we're actually being is how we'll move from Theory to PRACTICE to Mastery Together TODAY. Again, early research shows that spending just a few minutes a day using the Heroic app to hit just 3+ Heroic Targets in your Big 3 protocol can help you boost your Energy by 40%, your Productivity by 20% and your connection by 15%. So… LET'S GO, HERO!!! Now… Back to the math… Here's how James puts it in his brilliant book Atomic Habits. He tells us: "It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving 1 percent isn't particularly notable—sometimes it isn't even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here's how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you're done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you'll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent." 1% gains aggregated and compounded for a year equals an astonishing 37x improvement. And... As I say in our Notes on Atomic Habits, create a spreadsheet (like this) and run that 1% daily improvement out for another year. Guess what? After two years, you're not 74 times better. You're now 1,400 (!!) times better. Why stop there? Run it out another year. After the third year of aggregating and compounding those 1% gains, you're now 53,405 times better. Four years? You're 2,017,828 times better. Five years? You're 76,240,507 times better. Shall we run it 10 years out? OK. Let's. Result: Well, on day 3,472 we hit our last normal number. We're 998,822,690,009,590 times better. (That's nearly a quadrillion times better by the way.) Then we break our Google Spreadsheet by day 3,650 when we're at 5.87074E+15. I don't even know what that means but I assume it's even more zeroes. (Hah. ) All that to say: Little things matter. A lot. Especially when we compound them over time. Let's use 1% of our day to +1%. TODAY.

Close the Gap TODAY In our last couple +1s, we spent some time hanging out with world-class mental toughness coach Brian Cain. We broke some arrows, ate some fire and got an invitation to a big UFC event where one of his fighters made Epictetus proud by smiling as he got punched in the face. Today we're going to spend some more time with Cainer. We're going to talk about getting 1% better. Let's head back to his little fable (appropriately called "One Percent Better") where his characters Sunny and Mr. Big are having a little chat. "'Good morning, Mr. Big! It's time to get juiced. Either we are going to dominate the day or the day will dominate us. Are you ready?' Sunny asked this with the excitement of a kid on Christmas Day. As we began walking the halls to the scent of bacon and breakfast, Sunny started asking me about math. 'Mr. Big, there are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in each hour. How many minutes are there in a day?' I quickly took out my phone and asked, 'Hey, Siri. How many minutes in a day?' 'There are 1,440 minutes in a day,' Siri chimed back. Then she asked, 'What's 1% of 1,440?' This is where I was stumped. I wasn't sure how to do the math. After all, I wasn't a math teacher. 'No idea,' I replied. '1% of a day is 14 minutes and 24 seconds,' she said emphatically. 'Everyone wants to get 1% better but they fail to intentionally invest 1% of their day because they don't even know that it's a strategy for success.'" Now… Mr. Big is a burned-out teacher. Sunny is his mentor. She works in the cafeteria and "brings the juice!" all day every day. Her #1 lesson and the focal point of the entire book? As Brian tells us: "The best place to start is to intentionally invest 1% of your day into yourself and become a better version of you today than you were yesterday. Then wake up tomorrow and do the same thing. Rinse and repeat. It's actually quite simple." Now, let's review the math. There are 24 hours in a day. 60 minutes per hour. That's 1,440 minutes per day. 1% of that? 14 minutes and 24 seconds. 1% of your day. Here's the question: What's the #1 thing you KNOW you could be doing that, if you spent just 1% of your day doing it, would have THE most positive impact in your life? Seriously. What is it? 1% of your day meditating is 14 minutes and 24 seconds of meditation. Would that change your life? How about 1% of your day training? Or 1% of your day with ZERO technology spent 101% focused on being present with your significant other and/or kids? Would that change your life? Or 1% of your day reflecting on your life purpose. Or LIVING more on purpose—doing the things you KNOW you could be doing for just 14 minutes and 24 seconds TODAY? Would that change your life? +1%. +1%. +1% Tiny investments that lead to tiny gains. That add up. Fast. Here's to using 1% of our days to get 1% better. TODAY. btw: Early research shows that spending WAY LESS than 1% of your day using the Heroic app to dominate your Big 3 protocol can help you boost your Energy by 40%, your Productivity by 20% and your connection by 15%. Just 3+ Heroic Targets a day keeps the daimon in play. LET'S GO!!!

Break Arrows with Your Neck Lately? In our last +1, we talked about the fact that Brian Cain recently visited me and the Johnson fam out here in the country outside of Austin. I casually mentioned that the kids and wifey and I had fun learning how to eat fire and break an arrow with our necks and do other fun things we didn't think we could do. Today I'd like to talk more about those broken arrows. First, a little more context. As we discussed, Brian is one of the world's leading mental toughness coaches. He's also a long-time student of mine and easily tied for first as one of the most inspiring, energized human beings I know. His client list includes four Major League Baseball Cy Young Award winners, eight UFC world champion mixed martial artists, World Series and Super Bowl Champions and MVPs, Olympic medalists, and countless other elite athletes and coaches. When he visited, he left a couple books with me as gifts: The 10 Pillars of Mental Performance Mastery and One Percent Better. They're both super-quick reading, inspiring fables packed with a ton of wisdom. I read both of them in the same weekend. (That's like me! ) Think: If Paulo Coelho wrote about mental toughness. And kinda like Robin Sharma's The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari or Dan Millman's Way of the Peaceful Warrior. 10 Pillars is all about the foundation of Brian's mental performance mastery program while One Percent Better is all about, as per the sub-title, "How to Close the Gap from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be." How? By getting ONE PERCENT BETTER. When? TODAY, Hero. Now… In One Percent Better, Brian shares a little formula with us that will be the basis of Today's +1. Here it is: A + S + GOYA = R. As the character in his book puts it: that acronym means "Ability + Strategy + Get Off Your Anatomy and do the work = Results." Then she says: "Ability is not something you are lacking to be the optimal version of yourself. You are simply blocking it. How we unblock our ability is by giving you the right strategy. … When you do that, you will see better results.'" So… Want to become Heroic and tap into your ultimate potential? You're not necessarily lacking the Ability. The real issue might be that you don't have the right STRATEGY. This was a lesson that Brian made vividly real for me and the kids when he visited recently. How he'd do it? He showed us how to break an arrow with our neck and eat fire. What's breaking arrows with your neck and eating fire have to do with this idea? Everything. Here's the short story. Brian took a wooden arrow and placed one end against the wall and the other end against his neck. Then he took a deep breath, stepped forward and SNAPPED THE ARROW in half. Then he invited us to do it. To which we were all tempted to say: "Nope! We're good!" (Hah.) Then he told us, "You don't lack the ABILITY to break the arrow with your neck. You just lack the STRATEGY on how to easily do it safely." Then he taught us how to do it. Then I did it. BOOM! Same thing with eating fire. There's a STRATEGY on how to do it. Once you know it, it's EASY. And, well, same thing with pretty much E V E R Y T H I N G in our lives. BJ Fogg echoes this wisdom in Tiny Habits. He tells us: "We are not the problem. Our approach to change is. It's a design flaw—not a personal flaw." Again, it's a STRATEGY issue not an ABILITY issue. Which brings us back to the equation A + S + GOYA = R. Ability + Strategy + Get Off Your Anatomy and DO THE WORK if you want the results!! You can't just know what to do. You have to DO IT. Which is why the #1 thing we are most committed to with Heroic is helping you move from Theory to Practice to Mastery. We need to know the right strategy then we need to actually DO the things we know we could be doing. Not someday. TODAY. So… GOYA and, as Brian Cain likes to say: Go Dominate the Day, Hero!!