You Are Heroic with Brian Johnson

It's a LOT easier to get fired up to do something with a strong YES!! What's your WILDLY awesome goal that'll help you crowd out all the shallow distractions?

Art and fear. (You may have noticed they go together.) This is a quick-reading (122 pages), witty, real look at the process and challenges of making art. Of course, I think the biggest art project all of us can ever engage in is the creation of our own optimized and actualized lives, so we’ll be focusing on Big Ideas we can apply to our lives today including: quitting vs. stopping, fast vs. slow, 50 lbs, the importance of progress, naive passion vs. informed passion and how to get work done like a PRO!

Tony Schwartz is the CEO and founder of The Energy Project, which helps companies fuel sustainable high performance by better meeting the needs of their employees. Drawing on the multidisciplinary science of sustainable high performance, Tony's abiding passion and lifelong commitment is to change the way the world works.

This is a great little book packed with gems on the creative process we can apply to both our work AND our lives. As per the sub-title, Austin gives us "10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative." Big Ideas we explore include the need to start copying, the importance of taking care of ourselves and establishing a routine as we set creative constraints and amassing a body of work as we consistently show up.

This is Austin Kleon's second masterful little book on optimizing creativity. The first? Steal Like an Artist. After learning how to get our creativity on, we're ready to become the artist whose ideas *others* steal. Big Ideas include chain creating, micro sabbaticals, playing till the 9th inning, troll pooper scoopers, and the #1 way to get more followers.

What do you think about excellence? Do you think it’s primarily driven by natural, inborn talent? Or, do you think that it’s primarily driven by effort? Matthew Syed tells us that’s a very important decision that has a broad impact on how we show up and shows us how to Bounce into our highest potential. Big Ideas we explore include: the iceberg illusion, 1 million balls, doublethink and the importance of purposeful practice + the growth mindset.

Failure. Some of us lean into it and learn as much as we can from it, and some of us prefer to avoid thinking about it and/or pretend it never happened. As you may guess, one approach leads to dramatically better performance over the long run. (Hint: Seeing failure as feedback + learning opportunities is a very wise idea.) Big Ideas we explore include a quick look at the aviation vs. health care industries, the importance of quantity of work if you want quality, marginal gains, cognitive dissonance and pre-mortems.

In this engaging discussion, Robin Sharma, a top authority on leadership and personal greatness, shares his insights on unlocking the greatness within everyone. He emphasizes that true leadership is accessible to all, featuring inspiring examples like a South African janitor. The conversation covers mastering mindset and habits for success, breaking down goals into manageable milestones, and the Game Changers Blueprint for actionable growth. Robin also critiques traditional education's gaps and advocates for integrating wisdom with practical life lessons.

John Maxwell is one of the world's authorities on leadership. He's sold over 25 million (!) books. This is a quick-reading 127 pages packed with wisdom and Big Ideas on Maxwell's eleven essential types of thinking—ranging from Big-Picture thinking to Realistic Thinking and everything in between. Big Ideas we explore include the power of targets for focused thinking, becoming a possibility thinker and anxietivity—how creativity and anxiety go together.

In my interview with Steven Kotler about The Rise of Superman his #1 piece of advice was to remember this: “No pressure, no diamonds.” It’s time to rise.