354 Thursday Refresh with Brian Johnson on Leading with Arete: Inspiring Heroic Action in Yourself, Your Team and Your Organization

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Brian Johnson, welcome to partnering leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. Mahan, 

[00:00:06] Brian Johnson: I am thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

[00:00:18] Mahan Tavakoli: I came across your work more than half a dozen years ago, as you were talking about anti fragility. I know it plays a big role in your work, including in your newest book, before we get to that, though, Brian, we'd love to know more about your upbringing and how it has impacted who you have become. 

[00:00:30] Brian Johnson: Yeah. We'll also talk about the fact it's my newest tattoo.

[00:00:36] Mahan Tavakoli: Brian, I'm not going to ask about all of the different tattoos you have, but I love that one. 

[00:00:41] Brian Johnson: What are you talking about? It's just my playbook, my origin story. The brief story is I've spent half of the last 25 years as a founder, CEO, the other half as a philosopher, lover of wisdom. But before that I was raised the youngest of five kids, lower middle class, blue collar family. My father worked in a grocery store for 39 years. Good man, struggled with alcohol.

His dad struggled with alcohol and his own life. So I like to say I appear to have lost the genetic and environmental lottery on that one. I experienced my own challenges as a young man, which have shaped how I show up. And really trying to understand what it is that makes exceptional people exceptional.

The people on my wall back here, some heroes I admire who lived a noble heroic life, and then just immerse myself in studying ancient wisdom, modern science, and practical tools to help people. Move from theory, knowing what they should be doing to practice to mastery and lots of details that we can talk about, within that, but that's the abridged story of what brought me here.

[00:01:46] Mahan Tavakoli: One of the things I love about your content and your work, Brian, is also your own authenticity in this. You haven't necessarily reached mastery yourself. 

[00:01:58] Brian Johnson: Yeah. To me, mastery is more practice. That is the master. The master is the one who knows they're never going to get there. There's no, they're there.

So let me show up today. Let me make today as close to a masterpiece as I can and just continue to practice. My son, he's into chess. He's only 11 now. When I wrote the book, he was 10. But he wants to be a grandmaster. That's his ambition. He's got the latent potential.

We'll see if he maintains the passion and the effort. But, he didn't want to go to a tournament. And if you want to become a grandmaster, you need to go to tournaments, so we were having this conversation about the voices that we all have in our heads. And I had written the book is a thousand pages, 451 micro chapters integrating ancient wisdom and modern science, but I didn't have the beginning written.

I didn't have the introduction written. Everything else was done. And I'm like, how do I present an ancient idea or a day which no one has heard of no one knows how to spell. What does it even mean? How do I present that? And then his challenges provided the perfect frame for me to introduce myself, my family, and these ideas.

But the basic idea is that we all have this voice within our heads, some of which is helpful, some of which is not, and we've got to discipline ourselves to learn how to close the gap and express the best version of ourselves. Such that we can live with Arte, which just to frame that up is the one word answer the ancient Stoics would give you if you had the opportunity to ask them how to live a good life, they'd tell you to live with Arte.

We translate that as virtue or excellence. But it means something closer to being your best self moment to moment. And I use this experience with my son to walk through that on that one Saturday morning when he didn't want to do something that he actually did want to do. 

[00:03:44] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a beautiful story, and a beautiful example.

Now, Brian, I interact with And work with a lot of CEOs and quite a few listened to this podcast as well. And their internal voice is very different than their external reality. How do you guide people to bridge some of that gap?

[00:04:06] Brian Johnson: It's funny because, when I talked to some elite, elite military people and others, this comes up as well. There's mostly people. Okay. How do I deal with imposter syndrome? Look, the blunt answer that is don't pose, be a real human being. And integrate all aspects of yourself and then also trust yourself.

The tattoo on this form is anti fragile confidence. . And again, we're all going to feel doubt, overwhelm at times, et cetera. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need to feel imposter syndrome when we embrace the reality that it's always going to be painful.

There's always going to be uncertainty. There's always going to be need to put in more hard work. And see that we're not alone in that process, then it's all right. Close the gap, be your best self, show up, earn more trust in yourself by doing the things you need to do, whether you feel like it or not.

And there's kind of three timeframes we can look at. We can look back and say, am I where I want to be relative to where I could have been? And then Dan Sullivan's wisdom on the gap and the gain comes in of pay attention to how far you come over the last five, 10, 25 years. Don't measure the gap of where you think you should be. Appreciate how far you've come.

Then there's the gap between where you are and where you 25 years. That's actually really exciting, especially when you approach it with appreciation for how far you've come and get clear on who you aspire to be. That's one of the most robust practices science says to boost your hope and being.

See your best self in the future. But I'm not talking about either one of those. I'm talking about this moment and this moment. So in any given moment, you are capable of expressing a certain version of yourself. And if in that moment you are not, and there's a gap between who you could have been and who you're actually being, it's in that gap, in that moment, not again, where you could have been and where you want to be in the moment in which regret, anxiety, disillusionment exists.

If you close the gap and you express the best version of yourself in that moment, you're living with Arta. And in that moment, you experience the summum bonum, the greatest good of life, according to the ancient Greek and Stoic philosophers. A sense of eudaimonia, it means good soul, but a sense of deep meaning purpose and flourishing.

But I think it's important to separate those three timeframes and then get in this moment. It's a heroic operationalized version of Tolle's power of now. And how do you show up fully engaged in this now? And string enough of those together and you'll create the life that you want. Then you're winning the ultimate game and all the other games, whether it's my son's chess, by the way, or the CEO running a large organization or whatever.

That's the frame that I like to approach it with and the temporal horizon. 

[00:06:54] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a beautiful way of looking at it for us as individual leaders. I see a lot of relevance also in the way this can apply to teams and organizations. So how do you bring your team or your organization to that mindset?

[00:07:13] Brian Johnson: Yeah, I spent time with an NBA team literally over the weekend, a couple hours, a few hours talking about exactly this. And I challenged him, these head coaches of sports teams, for example, they should be the most fit person on the team 20, 30 years older, right?

And of course they're not paid to be professional athletes, but how am I as a leader, not embodying the qualities that I want to see in my team, whether that's a sports team or a military special forces unit or a corporation. So lead yourself first. And this is where I come back to it. I know that.

There's organizational psychology and leadership, but for me and my ruthless, relentless focus in my work is the individual. I want you to have integrity in you living your highest ideals. The ancient Chinese philosophers talked about wu wei. Effortless right action, Confucius, Lao Tzu and others. That's what they trained their kings and emperors and leaders to embody.

Why? Because when you figure out how to effortlessly do the right thing, you have what they called moral charisma. Gandhi called it soul force. Martin Luther King referenced Gandhi's soul force in his “I have a dream speech”. 

So what we want to do as leaders, my mind is you want to have literally a neurologically palpable sense of integrity because people want to follow people that they inherently trust. We evolved to feel people's integrity. So, my relentless pursuit is to try to get the individual leader to show up in integrity with their highest ideals, which requires discipline to understand who you are at your best and then the actual discipline to be that best version of yourself.

Never perfectly, but more and more consistently. And when we do that again, there's an ineffable power that people feel. And it tends to have downstream effects across the organization. So , that's where I come back to. It gets , infinitely more complex when you bring one more person in, let alone an executive team, let alone an organization with hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of people.

But at the end of the day, the individual and the CEO who's listening to this or the executive, you are your most valuable asset, your consciousness, who you are, how you show off. And we've got to get you showing up with more wisdom, discipline, love, courage, et cetera. 

[00:09:39] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the way you put it, Brian. A lot of times our focus is on the team or on the organization.

Part of what I hear from you is that leadership more than anything else is the example that we set. If we don't focus on ourselves as leaders of the team and organization, then we haven't earned a right to really be able to bring others along. So part of what you're saying is first work on developing your own heroic potential before focusing on others, no question.

[00:10:09] Brian Johnson: And then in addition to being the example, that's worthy of emulation. You're also in a physical and psychological state through which you can solve your creative problems. So why I train like a world class athlete, and I eat, and I move, and I sleep, and I breathe, and I focus my mind with the diligence I do it, is because I don't want to do my job.

I want the best version of me to be able to come through this little version of me, and I find that I'm able to solve more complex problems more intuitively and creatively. When I am doing those basic fundamentals that we often take for granted. Now, if you're getting, five, six hours of sleep, good luck.

There's no possible way that version of you is going to show up as powerfully and you're carrying 10, too many pounds. There's no scenario where that version of you is going to outperform the version of you that's at your optimal weight, that's eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing your mind at world class levels.

So I like to control the controllables, not just so I am personally striving to be a radiant exemplar, but so I can solve my problems with a consciousness that I simply can't. If I'm not taking care of those basic fundamentals that I think are often overlooked, not just in the corporate world, but again these coaches, the head coaches of these teams, it's like, what, how's that possible, man?

[00:11:28] Mahan Tavakoli: Brian, you also talk about heroes having strength for two and protecting others.

I would love to get your thoughts on how you believe leaders can embody this ethos. 

[00:11:46] Brian Johnson: Yes. So in ancient Greece, the word hero didn't mean tough guy or killer of bad guy. The word hero that they chose for hero meant protector. So a hero is a protector. A hero is not a victim. A hero has the strength for two and many more than two if you're running an organization.

And they do the hard work to create that strength and their secret weapon is love. Like the ancient hero and the modern hero particularly those in the military who are the most obvious heroes. We're first responders. You do that as an act of love and service. So I believe that all leaders are called and we are called naturally to serve.

And the more we can make a connection between those we serve. And again, this is science. If you can make a connection between the work you do and the people you serve, that's the fastest way to deepen your sense of meaning and purpose and your performance. Whether you're picking tomatoes or running an organization.

So making that connection to the people you're serving and the families you're serving in your own family, you're serving and then the work you need to do in order to be that version of you that we're talking about. To me is absolutely essential. And people listening to your show don't fall into this predominantly, but we have way more than enough people complaining and criticizing and blaming and throwing their hands up.

We need people who are willing to do the truly hard work. To become the best version of themselves and lean effectively at that scale. 

[00:13:12] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, I would love to get your thoughts though, Brian outside of historical figures and people in the military, what would you see as examples in the business world of the kind of heroic leadership that we can learn from and emulate?

[00:13:32] Brian Johnson: I think that anyone listening to this show who's this deep into this show who's subscribing to your show is clearly committed to being a noble leader. And I think just making the implicit explicit and dedicating your life to that and saying that means something to me. I want to give my best to the world.

It's Stephen Covey's eulogy exercise. Begin with the end in mind. What do you want to be remembered for? What's your legacy and how are you going to live in integrity with that right now? And then actually do it. And this comes back to the imposter syndrome. When you have the humility to know you're not perfect, you'll never be perfect, and you're willing to do the hard work to try to get a little better.

You don't feel imposter syndrome because you know how hard it is, and you know how hard you're working, you know you're never going to be perfect, but anyone this deep into this particular show who's so committed to being better in service to something bigger than themselves by listening to your show and do whatever else you do.

You're already committed to that. Just make it explicit and then perhaps double down, and for me, it's the subtitle to the book is activate your heroic potential. Activation energy point is a chemistry idea. So one thing becomes another thing at an activation energy point. You want to start a fire.

It's 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing less than that will do it. You want to boil water. It's 212 degrees Fahrenheit. So I think there's a certain apathy critical cynical and almost nihilistic attitude that's taken over a lot of our culture where it's cool to not quite be that intense. And I think we need to as leaders step up.

And be willing to activate. But I think anyone, again, listening to this is already there. We just need to more deliberately turn up the heat perhaps a bit. 

[00:15:16] Mahan Tavakoli:  Taking this information and taking this knowledge and activating it. That's one of the important things, obviously, people who take the time to listen to a podcast, to read your book have taken that first step, but there is a huge difference between knowing what we are supposed to say and do.

And being able to do it. And then there is a big difference between that ability to do it and actually activating it, as you say. 

[00:15:42] Brian Johnson: Doing it consistently and then the anti fragility to bring that theme back, doing it, especially when you don't feel like it. So when life hits you, what happens?

Do you break? Are you fragile? Or are you resilient? You can handle more pressure, then you break, then you bounce back. Or to go to Nassim Taleb, an intellectual we both admire, can you use that challenge to literally get stronger? This is what my life's work in part is about, operationalizing that. How do you do that?

And  to bring Nassim's metaphor he says that the wind extinguishes a candle, which is fragile, but that same wind will fuel a fire, which is anti fragility. So we need to build the fire such that we can use all of life's challenges to literally get stronger. That's what it means to be anti fragile.

And the only way to do that in my mind is to earn deep trust in yourself. And when life hits you, what do you do? Do you do all the vicious behaviors and numb yourself? Or do you step back and say, Oh, I'm getting hit right now. Rather than do those things, I'm going to double down on my protocol on the things I do when I'm at my best and especially do those when you're at your worst, that's the whole kind of angle.

And this is what I mentioned to you before we got going. This is what the most elite performers. Whether it's a sports team or military, organization or corporate executives. This is what they want me to talk about the most, because obviously we face more, chaos uncertainty and challenges than ever before.

How do we personally train ourselves to respond to that? Then how do we create a culture in which we know that's not going away? And we all together know how to address those challenges. And go from feeling innervated and burned out to a deep sense of calm, confidence and energized tranquility to perform at our best when it matters most.

[00:17:36] Mahan Tavakoli: So how do you do that, Brian? As we've talked about it, I also love Nacin Tale Lab's work. I love the concept of anti-fragility. Talk about it all the time, 

conceptually, a lot of leaders understand that a lot of teams understand that you do talks. I do talks and they nod and they're like, yeah, got it. But that breakage sucks. So 

how do you deal with it 

[00:18:01] Brian Johnson: then? So my coach is a guy named Phil Stutz. Phil Stutz is in a Netflix documentary called Stutz with another one of his clients, Jonah Hill.

I've worked with him almost 450 one on one sessions. In one of my early sessions, he complimented me on what he calls emotional stamina. I had no idea what it was. So the next session I said, what's emotional stamina? He told me it's your ability to handle pain, uncertainty, and hard work. He calls those the three inevitables.

So your first problem is, and I'll get back to Phil in a second is me and you, we think we shouldn't be experiencing. The setback. It sucks. Of course, it does on one level. But dude, anyone who wants to do anything significant is going to do it. So it's not wise. It is foolish to argue with that reality.

So when it arises, what do you do? The first step is you radically accept it as part of a good heroic life and part of leadership. Jim Mattis says leaders solve problems. If you don't want to solve problems, get out of leadership. So the thing that is wrong in quotes that's your job.

Is to solve that. So it's not a surprise when we get set back. Of course, you're going to get set back. Now, back to Phil and my session. He says you got this ability to handle pain, uncertainty and hard work to which I said, Thank you. Follow on question. How do I get more of it? And this is what I've transitioned into and adapted into anti fragile confidence.

What he said is tattooed on my brain and will operationalize now. He said, this is what you got to do. The worse you feel, the more hammered you're getting by life, the more committed you need to be to your protocol. That's how you build emotional stamina, how you build what I'd call anti fragile confidence.

Now, that presupposes two things. Obviously, it presupposes your ability to execute your protocol when you don't feel like it and you're getting hammered. But more importantly and centrally, it assumes you have a protocol. So my question for you and for everyone that I do this work with is, what's your protocol?

Who are you at your best? In your energy, your work, and your love? We've all experienced peak moments in our lives, but the question is, why do you give up those gains? Why aren't you doing the things you did when you're at your best? We've got to make, as Josh Waitzkin says, your prior best, your new baseline.

So I have an exercise we can do to help people get clarity on that. And then I systematically help them architect a protocol. It's like a checklist. So you would never get on a plane. And whenever I fly to give a talk, I'm like, I would have not gotten on the plane if I thought the pilot didn't have a checklist that they went through full stop.

And then I say, playfully, you shouldn't get a surgery. Unless the surgical team has a checklist. Simple stuff. Because the team without the checklist kills 47 percent more people than those with a checklist. Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto. So my question for you, literally you, and those listening is, what's on your checklist?

Do you have a checklist of things you do as an individual to be your best? That's your protocol. Now, your protocol. I do this and this. I personally have my top three things I do and my energy to work in love and what we help people get clarity on with heroic and our work in corporations, et cetera, is that I'm in bed for nine to 10 hours a night.

You can't pay me to get by on less than that sleep. Now, rare exceptions. But that's my practice. I meditate for 15 minutes a day, and I do certain movement training exercise every day. Top three things. Really hard to have a really bad day when I do those things. Now, when life hits me hard, I don't stop doing those things.

I double down on them. So one of the examples for me is I made history raising money via crowdfunding sEC moved from a million dollars to five million dollars in the max you could raise. We were the first company to ever raise 5 million from our community. We oversubscribed didn't raise 10 a year later.

I'm two days out from launching the app and I get a letter from the SEC made out to our legal department that we don't have, that they had opened an investigation into our business setback two days before. I'm $5 million into a $15 million round. What do I do? Do I go off the rails and forget my protocol?

No. I went from meditating 15, 30 minutes to meditating. An hour in the morning, an hour at night. My training next next level, every single thing that I was committed to, I took to the next level. So that thing that would have destroyed the prior version of me literally made me stronger. Now I had to navigate some stuff that was unpleasant.

We navigated it in eight months rather than 24. It wasn't fun, but I literally got stronger from that obstacle, that challenge, that setback, because it forced me to slow down and double down on my protocol rather than break. I got stronger. The law firm we hired and the way our team navigated it so impressed them that they hired me to talk about these ideas at their partner meeting, right after we had resolved the issue.

That's it. Personal example of how I've done it, and it's exhilarating because if you get even 5 to 10 percent better at using that Q trigger prompt of a setback to deepen your practice, everything changes. And that applies to any organization, whether it's a sports team that loses a game, my son who loses a chess match, which we talk about in the book, or a CEO who's running a business.

And now I'm saying a lot and you're getting me fired up, but that's how I approach it and operationalize it and take it from a nice warm and fuzzy idea to concrete. Practices that we can engage in. 

[00:23:33] Mahan Tavakoli: I absolutely love that example. Brian also builds on part of what you said, that the highest performers have the ability to do that.

In my conversations with Navy SEALs, like Rich Deviney also started the mind. Jim for the Navy SEALs. They also go through the same process of doubling down on the protocol, which then gives them the strength to be able to be more anti fragile. So I love the example and 

it requires the. Discipline that then gets us through those tough times and makes us more anti fragile. It's not just conceptually talking about it, it's the habits and the behaviors that get us through that. 

[00:24:19] Brian Johnson: Dude, exactly. So I was blessed to give a talk to SOCOM which is, the U. S. Special Forces Command to which the Navy SEALs report, the Army Rangers, Delta Force, et cetera.

When I was invited to give a talk on resiliency, I drew a line on my first slide through resiliency and I talked about anti fragility. And I talked about exactly this, but General Fenton, who runs SOCOM, I took 10 pages of notes, he's blessed for me to share ideas from it. Literally, first page in the notes.

They train something over and over and over again. Not until they get it right, which is what the average person does, but until they can't get it wrong. So we gotta elevate our standards to that level, and then know what your basic fundamentals are, and do them relentlessly, especially when you don't feel like it.

And then everything changes. So fully aligned love rich in his work and the attributes. That's what he's talking about. And what are the attributes of peak performers? But I would offer that before you have discipline, you need to have wisdom. So you've got to know the ultimate game, which is to be your best self, to live with art.

Of which your business is just a smaller game. My son's chess even the talk I gave. I said, look, the ultimate war isn't out there. It's in here. And they have protocols. They have a checklist for everything in the war department. But they don't in the personal inner war that's going on. And getting that more systematized at the personal level.

It's essential and it doesn't matter what you do. If you want to do it at an elite level, you have to honor the basic fundamentals. The amateur gets bored with them, but the best don't ever. And they get more and more precise in them in the relentless about improving it. Especially again, when things get hard is when they go down.

And make sure that structure and the foundation is solid. 

[00:26:06] Mahan Tavakoli: And this becomes even more important, Brian. One of the things that has been a challenge COVID caused some of this for business executives and leaders, they face even more challenges with some of the return to office digital disruption, AI, a lot of.

Uncertainty and changes at a much faster pace. It is putting more pressure on them the greater uncertainty, and then goes back to your point of knowing the ultimate game, which is your first of the objectives on achieving and activating that heroic potential. It makes that more important. So as.

Leaders are reflecting on knowing their ultimate game. How do they discover what that ultimate game is for the individual? 

[00:26:57] Brian Johnson: Yes. So the way I frame it up is this is a 2, 500 year old challenge. All ancient wisdom and faith traditions talk about it. Modern science confirms. At the end of the day, the ultimate game is to win that inner battle, between vice and virtue the diamond, the guiding spirit is the Greek word for genius was the Roman word for the guiding spirit.

We're all said to have a diamond or a genius demon is the diminutive of diamond. So we've all got this battle going on winning that game is the ultimate game, choosing to live a life of deep meaning and purpose. It's David Brooks's second mount. Like he's got his second mountain metaphor.

You get to the top of the first mountain. Anyone listening to this has ascended more than one first mountain. You get to the top, you look around, you're like, really? I was told if I got this and this, and I'd experienced something different than what I'm experiencing right now, perfect. Welcome to the club.

You're not alone. The second mountain, one in which you commit yourself to living for something more than yourself, becoming a better person, deepening relationships. In making a contribution independent of the fame, wealth, and hotness is what a good life comes down to. It's Stephen Covey's. You get to the top of the ladder and you look around, you realize you put it up against the wrong wall.

Oops. But at the end of the day, it's what we're talking about. And it's summarized in one word, which is Orate. Be the best version of yourself moments, step back look forward, see yourself at the end of your life, eulogy, exercise, all the cubby things, and then bring it back to today.

And then systematically architect your life such that you're living in integrity with those values. I'm in the protocol things we're talking about, etc. But just stepping back and realizing that we've been seduced to play the wrong game. The extrinsic fame, wealth, hotness, Instagram followers. EBITDA, numbers like square footage in your house.

Yeah. Not that those are not important because they are, but frame it up. That's a smaller game. Vis a vis the bigger game of being a better human being. And all the other things we just discussed, do that, you tend to win the other games more. So when I'm working with my son in chess, I'm thinking about who he's becoming as a human being.

And literally the eating, the moving, the sleeping, the breathing, the focusing. Can I step in between stimulus? And response maintaining equanimity. In a sense of calm confidence in the face of these challenges. And again, those are very basic fundamental practices that I think influence everything.

[00:29:25] Mahan Tavakoli: So I know that parenting, you mentioned your son is also important to you. And there is an issue that relates both to parenting and something that I'm hearing from more and more CEOs, Brian, and that is the lack of anti fragility, if you want to call it this way, in parenting. Many entering the workforce and some of the challenges people are having.

So how do you develop that with your son and how can leaders help others develop some of that anti fragility? 

[00:30:02] Brian Johnson: Yeah, it's such a great and important question and a lot easier with my son, because we've been creating He was born my wife's into this stuff. This is what we do, right? So i'm carol dweck 101, dude I've been doing every single thing from her It works. So it's a lot easier for me to teach my son, he's 11 years old. My daughter, we've been teaching these things since they were born. And frankly, I wish I had me and my wife as my parents, to teach me this stuff, whatever it is now, almost 50 years to pick up some of these ideas.

But with organizations, I think it goes back to what we talked about, that we as leaders need to understand these ideas, have the wisdom and the discipline to respond to the challenges like this. I don't use language like this sucks or what are it is what it is. It is what it is. So I'm going to radically accept it.

And we like to playfully say the heroic gods have blessed us with an opportunity to practice our philosophy. And then I know that I can use anything to get stronger. I firmly believe that. And the leader has to believe that. And they have to be believable by having gone through enough reps of it.

And then I think there needs to be a cultural intellectual frame of these ideas. Again, Nassim Taleb's ideas are genius. Anyone I've shared this with not one person has said, no, that's nonsense. They all lean in and then you tell them what good hero's journey is supposed to be hard. That's rule number one.

You would walk out of a movie if the hero just lounged around and had nothing to do. One challenge is the bigger, the better, and they're going to get hammered. They're not going to want to show up, but they do. Somehow they muster the courage to show up. That's what makes a hero's story interesting. Now, when we experienced challenges, we say that's interesting in the abstract and when it happens to someone else, but not me.

But what if we said, Oh, okay, so the script writer This is what Epictetus says. When you face challenges, act as if God just gave you a wrestler to get you in shape, an Olympic caliber wrestler to grapple with you. That's literally what I say to our team when we face challenges. All right, perfect. Let's go.

This is what I signed up for. It's supposed to be hard. It's go time. So I think the leader understanding this and having the wisdom. And then communicating it and create the culture that we pride ourselves in responding that way. We don't break when things get hard. We expect challenges, and we know what to do when they come. It's so obvious to say that out loud, but just to make it a cultural norm and people want to be part of those organizations. Who wants a leader that's oh yeah, we're getting our butts kicked again. You know what I'm whining about it like that's not leadership denying reality isn't either, but I think operationalizing these things in our own idiosyncratic ways is essential,

[00:32:51] Mahan Tavakoli: and one of the things I would highly recommend to leaders, Brian, leadership starts by the leader, him or herself. Making sure they are aligned that said it helps to go off of the same script and have conversations where everyone in the team is aligned. So what I imagine your team members already know the thinking therefore the language is there.

The practices are there to align. So in order to move a culture of a team or an organization, I think everyone needs to read from the same script. Work on themselves and then think about how can we incorporate these in our team and organizational culture. 

[00:33:34] Brian Johnson: Goosebumps. And then you need to take the virtues you have on the wall, on your mission statement and rip them off and put them into operationalized practices.

Every single day, small wins, Teresa Amabile style, like it can't be an abstraction. And again, this is what we do with our corporate partners. I'll do the talk and all these things, but nobody wants a group inspired. For the day, right? I literally just got back from a three hour workshop, but we're integrating this into the DNA and the fabric of the culture.

You come on to this team and boom, we're getting you into this orientation, and that's a lot more fun of an organization, a lot more effective of an organization. And by the way, you teach the whole person. It's not just their work. It's their energy, their work and their love. And the family members become engaged.

It's a really beautiful kind of rippling out. But everything you said completely agree with easier said than done, as always, but it starts at the top, embodying these ideas and then doing the hard work to craft the narrative and shifting the culture. And today, with the burnout, the disengagement, 80 percent of us are struggling with some form of anxiety or overwhelm.

I gave a talk on Mental Health Day to a very large bank, one of the largest in the world. And Invisible disabilities was the theme of the talk. So many of us are struggling, and we need concrete practices through which we can conquer these. The first of which is, it's supposed to be hard. Quit telling yourself it's supposed to be easy.

And then this is what you do in these circumstances, and this is what I do. Again, when things are rocky, that's when you need to make sure you get a good night of sleep, alcohol, don't pull that out. Nope. You don't need that right now. Maybe the Netflix subscription can take a break. We don't numb ourselves.

We get ourselves in pink. physical state so we can be in a peak psychological state to meet these challenges head on. 

[00:35:22] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, I love Admiral McRaven so much about his journey, his leadership. You quote his motto in your book. When in doubt, overload.

What do you mean by that? 

[00:35:37] Brian Johnson: Yeah. Admiral McRaven is one of my heroes, four star Admiral who ran SOCOM by the way. So General Fenton now has Admiral McRaven's job when he ran SOCOM, et cetera. So McRaven, as you may know wrote a book called make your, just for the audience wrote, make your bed.

Brilliant human being and Admiral he's written a number of other books, but in his most recent wisdom from the bullfrog. The bullfrog is the longest tenured Navy SEAL, right? He says, when in doubt, overload. The context there is Navy SEALs go through basic underwater demolition,

sEAL training. Basic underwater demolition. The SEALs were formed basically around World War II. And they were the ones that, for example, on D Day, someone had to blow up the underwater obstacles that would have prevented the landing of the insane number of ships that let the hundreds of thousands of people onto the shores on D Day.

Those people were SEALs, the first SEALs. They had to go underwater and they had to blow up the explosives. Now, Navy SEALs then and now are taught a certain formula to know how much explosive to use. When they're facing an obstacle underwater. But the rule is when in doubt overload, the army's joke is the ultimate variable is P for plenty.

Make sure you add enough explosive. This is how I strive to approach everything personally with our team. Now, again, I want to stay grounded. I want to stay balanced and all these things, but when in doubt, I'm overloaded. When you're facing stress and you're wondering this or that, do more. That doesn't mean work more.

It means make sure you're practicing your philosophy at a higher level, which will also mean turn off your phone to be with your kids. You know what I mean? Take that time to recover and to be present with your kids. Make sure you're getting the sleep you need to show up as your best self. But when in doubt, overload, it's one of my favorite concepts.

It's why I created the book I created. It's a thousand page book with 451 ideas. I didn't know where I wanted to land. All right I'm reading McRaven's book. There's my answer. When in doubt, overload, do more than what's expected from you. And put everything you got into solving that problem, et cetera.

[00:37:45] Mahan Tavakoli: Do more in the areas that matter most. And you have done that through your writing, your podcast, Brian, the community you've created all of the great work that you do for the audience to engage more with you find out more about the book and your community. Where would you send them to? 

[00:38:05] Brian Johnson: Yeah, I appreciate you.

The book are to a R E T E. If you're not seeing it on the T shirt, which is also on this forum, by the way, months, buy that book anywhere you buy books and then heroic. The training platform you can find in your iOS and Android stores. One of my dear friends and mentors is a guy named john Mackey, who started Whole Foods in one of our chats.

He said heroic. is the self development platform in the world to which I said, can I quote you on that? He's a big fan of what I do with philosopher's notes, where I distill great books into simple summaries. I've done it over 600 times, all the ancient wisdom and modern science.

He loves that. And you can find that at heroic in your app store, heroic. us slash coach. We've trained 10, 000 coaches from a hundred countries and heroic. us slash corporate for the corporate work that we do as well, which would be relevant for our community, but. I appreciate you, man, and the work you're doing and just a fun conversation talking about important ideas.

[00:39:03] Mahan Tavakoli: I really appreciate you, Brian. I've also been a fan of philosophers notes. And one of the things I love about podcasts is someone like you can have an influence and impact on so many people's lives and not even know it. So you're putting a lot of good out in the world. podcast now. Bye. I first got to know you half a dozen plus years ago and learned from you.

So you had an influence on me as you have had on countless others. So I really appreciate you sharing some of your thoughts with the partnering leadership community. Thank you so much, Brian Johnson. 

[00:39:43] Brian Johnson: I appreciate you, Mohan. Day one, all in. Let's go, as we like to say, great shot.