Becoming Your Own Hero, with Brian Johnson and Sean Fargo

Speaker 1 · 0:03Today, I have the honor of speaking with Brian Johnson. Brian is the founder and CEO of Heroic Public Benefit Corporation. He's 50% philosopher and 50% CEO, and 101% committed to helping create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051. As a founder and CEO, he's made crowdfunding history and built and sold two social platforms. As a philosopher and teacher, he's helped millions of people from around the world, trained 10,000 plus heroic coaches from 100 plus countries, and created a protocol that science says changes lives. So, Brian Johnson, welcome to our podcast.

Speaker 2 · 0:58Sean, thank you so much for that gracious introduction. And then as I said before we um kind of went live here, I'm already calmed and soothed by your very presence. So I admire you already and I appreciate your kind words. And um yeah, just really looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 1 · 1:15Yeah, thank you, Brian. You have a new book coming out called Rate, if I'm not mistaken. So I'm looking forward to learning more about Rate and how you help people become the heroes we were meant to be. I am, I think, awestruck at the size of the book. You know, on first glance, it's like, wow, that's a tome. You know, it kind of puts war and peace to shame in the sense of its girth. But when I look at the table of contents and the objectives and how many parts to this book there are, it looks very accessible. And I start to realize oh, I can do this, I can read this. This looks like something you know, I'm really curious about. Like all the different chapters in here are appealing. And so it breaks it up into these bite-sized pieces of wisdom, which kind of in a way mirrors heroic, which is an online app and platform in which you share a lot of the world's top wisdom gleaned from over 600 uh books. And so I encourage people to check out the book Rate. And if you're listening to this, it's A-R-E-T-E with a accent ago over the E. And we'll put links to where you can get the book in the show notes. But love to hear about what does Arate mean? Is I know that it means virtue, but why did you choose that name? What are you hoping for for people who read this book?

Speaker 2 · 3:07Hmm, beautiful. And that was the idea. We wanted the book to have a bit of gravitas. And I actually used Stephen Pressfield's War of Art and War and Peace as the two books I wanted to blend. I wanted to have the gravitas of a war and peace, but the readability, micro chapter, pithy, in and out, more wisdom and less time is kind of how I frame it up. But there are 451 of the most potentially life-changing ideas I know. And I've spent the better part of the last 15, 20 years studying ancient wisdom and modern science and trying to figure out how we can help people operationalize that wisdom with practical tools in their modern lives. And we've done scientific research, as you mentioned in the intro, that has proven the efficacy of the app, of our coach program, and of the elements that are in the book. But when I looked at the book, it was going to be a 200 to 300 page normal, I playfully say fluffy book, just a normal book. I was 70% of the way done, and I'm like, wait, wait, this isn't the book. My style was very pithy, intense, in and out. Think about this, and then get to work. So, anyway, the book evolved into that 451 ideas, which is 451 because it takes 451 degrees Fahrenheit to ignite a fire. One thing becomes another thing at what's known as an activation energy point. So I what do we had? Joseph Campbell's admonition from Sri Ramakrishna in mind. Do not approach enlightenment unless you approach enlightenment like a man or woman approaches a pond whose hair is on fire. We need to show up with a grounded, but an intensity. This isn't a dress rehearsal. The challenges we face culturally, I think, are historically significant. And it's time for us to step up and be our best selves. We're the hero we've been waiting for. And I think that takes a certain level of grounded intensity, an activation of that divine potential within each of us. And for me to use the Eastern idea, it's a bodhisattvic vow to be your best self in service of something bigger than yourself. Now, having said all that, Aurete is the one-word summation of my entire life's work. And it's also the answer that the ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, and the ancient Stoics, which is kind of my preferred flavor of ancient wisdom, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, if you asked them how to live a good, noble life, they'd answer you in a single word. That word is arte. They would say, live with arte, which we translate as virtue or excellence, but it has a deeper meaning, something closer to being your best self, moment to moment to moment. And the way I like to frame it up is if you are capable of being this, drawing a line at my eye height, and you're actually being this, a foot below that, and there's a gap between who you could have been in the moment, your most enlightened self, however you want to frame it up, and who you actually were. It's in that gap in which regret, anxiety, and disillusionment exist. If you can close that gap, there's no room for that negative stuff. In that moment, you feel a deep sense of what the Greeks would call eudaimonia, good soul. You call whatever you want, joy, bliss, rapture, enlightenment. In the moment in which you express the best version of yourself, I would say you are heroic, but the way you do that is you live with orte, moment to moment to moment. And the book is about how to do that, operationalizing it in seven objectives in those 451 micro chapters.

Speaker 1 · 6:47Beautiful. You've talked about these seven objectives, and I'll just read them if you don't mind, for people who may be wondering what they are. Objective number one is to know the ultimate game. Objective two is to forge anti-fragile confidence. Objective three is to optimize your big three. Objective four, make today a masterpiece. Objective five, master yourself. Objective six, dominate the fundamentals and objective seven, activate your superpower. Could you talk a little bit about this framework of these seven objectives and why that's so powerful for people?

Speaker 2 · 7:40Yeah, I'd love to try to, you know, and I can explain why I think it is, but my obsession has been trying to understand what all ancient wisdom traditions and then modern science have had to say about how to live a good, noble, virtuous life. So, as you mentioned in the app, I've distilled over 600 books: the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, you know, the Dao Deijing, Confucius's Analex, Rumi's Daylight, and his poetry to ancient Stoics and all the other ones you'd expect. And then all the modern science that has been done to essentially, frankly, establish validity scientifically, empirically, that those things were true, which is both ancient wisdom, modern science, common sense that needs to be put into common practice. And so what we've done is we've developed this structure that allows for idiosyncratic expression. And one of the things I'm most proud of is people of all faith traditions seeing us as a vehicle and a means through which they can be their best selves. But the seven objectives were just how I and our team tried to map it out so it logically cohered and it built on itself and made sense and allowed you to move from theory to practice to mastery, is one of the big themes. Ancient wisdom, modern science, theory, practice, mastery. But the first objective, as you mentioned, is you got to know the ultimate game. And this is the bhagavit. Gita wanna know, it's every wisdom tradition. It's we've been seduced to play the wrong game, to go after the fame, the wealth, the hotness. But it's the intrinsic motivators, being a better person, deepening relationships, making a humble contribution to the world that leads to happiness. You need to know that. And you need to play that game, and you need to play it well, and you do that by living with virtue. So we establish that. That in itself is life-changing for a lot of people because they realize, oh, shoot, David Brooks' second mountain. I got to the top of my first mountain. I achieved all the external success metrics, and I'm not happy. Why is that? Because you can't measure your happiness on Instagram followers and square footage in your house and initials after your name. You've got to focus on the intrinsic stuff. But anyway, that's objective one. And then objective two is all right, now that you know the game, you got to know rule number one of the game. It's supposed to be hard. And you've been taught that there are supposed to be challenges. You've been taught to play the wrong game and that it should be easy. And then if you ever suffer or experience challenges, then something must be wrong with you. But again, Buddhism 101, first law of life is there is suffering. You will experience it. Nothing's wrong with you. Have some self-compassion and wisdom to know that you're not alone and then do the hard work to forge the strength for two. And again, the Buddha is the hardest worker, spiritual aspirant in history. I mean, who worked harder than him? And oh, by the way, the Buddha reached enlightenment, and what did he do the next day? He meditated. If the Buddha had to meditate after he reached enlightenment, I'm gonna go ahead and keep my practice going. So anti-fragile confidence. It's a phrase I adapted from my coach Phil Stutz. The basic idea is you got to know who you are at your best, what practices you engage in from mindfulness, meditation, self-compassion, in eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, these very basic fundamentals that lead to a good life. You need to know what those are. We call it your protocol. And then you need to do it consistently, especially on the days you don't feel like it. Most people, when they get hit hard, they start doing all the things they they know they shouldn't be doing. We like to reverse that. When we get hard, we want to respond by deepening our practices. When you do that, the thing that used to knock you off becomes the very thing that triggers your next level of practice. That's how you cultivate anti-fragile, not fragile or resilient. You get stronger the more you get hit. And confidence. Etymologically, confidence means intense trust. And you can only build intense trust in any relationship if you do what you say you will do. If you don't do what you say you will do, whether it's meditate or put your phone away with your kids or go on a walk at a certain time, again, being blunt and direct, you shouldn't have confidence in yourself. You shouldn't trust yourself. You aren't trustworthy. You say you're going to do something, you're not doing it, stated positively and compassionately. When we do the things more consistently, we feel a deeper sense of trust that we can handle life's challenges. And then we feel a sense of, wow, when I do that which is best for me, when I least feel like it, I can handle anything. And there's a really grounded deep sense of what we call anti-fragile confidence that comes from that. Those are the two objectives. And then we systematically break that down into more and more discrete chunks. The big three is energy, work, and love. Freud said a good life is work and love. I say yes, and if your energy isn't optimized because of poor lifestyle choices, you won't show up powerfully in your work or your love. Get your energy dialed in, focus it in work and in love. And then making today a masterpiece, we have practices on that. I love the art and science of behavioral change, which is the fifth objective. Most people have failed so many times to change their behaviors that they've given up and they've told themselves the story that something's wrong with them. They think they have a character flaw. I'm not disciplined enough, I'm too weak-willed, or whatever it is. BJ Fogg, the great Stanford researcher, says it's not a character flaw, it's a design flaw. You haven't been taught how to install and delete habits. We talk about that. And then the fundamentals are eating, moving, sleeping, and breathing. And that's everything. Your physiology drives your psychology. When I changed my breathing pattern, I've always been anxious. As a young boy, I had it wasn't labeled as anxiety, but I was scared of everything. I have done a number of things to improve my calmness and my confidence. Meditation helped, but training my breath was by far the most powerful thing I did. And anyway, the seventh objective, activate your superpower, is a playful way to say that you're the hero we've been waiting for. Everyone here, I believe, is called to be their best selves in their own idiosyncratic ways. Gandhi named what I call your superpower, which is soul force. So satya graha, which is what we translated into English as nonviolent resistance, which is what he named his movement. Satya graha means something way more than nonviolent resistance. It meant truth force, virtue force, love force, or soul force. Martin Luther King talked about soul force in his I Have a Dream speech. I say all of those heroes on my wall, all of your favorite heroes, all of our favorite heroes have one thing in common: a sense of palpable moral charisma or soul force. And that's what we all have latent within us that when we live in integrity with our own idiosyncratic truths, we have this ineffable power, that moral charisma, the soul force that Gandhi and MLK believed was how you change the world. And so do I. So my entire life's work is that activating your soul force such that we can each together be the change and change the world together.

Speaker 1 · 14:55Wow.

Speaker 2 · 14:56Do you have a mic that you can drop? Yeah, I know, right? You're getting me grounded excited here, but those are the seven objectives.

Speaker 1 · 15:04Thanks for walking through that. I love that phrase soul force and those ingredients that make it up. And your book, Rate, as you mentioned earlier, talks about the four primary virtues, and then was it the four secondary virtues as well? Is that the good term for it?

Speaker 2 · 15:25Yeah. So the idea is four cardinal virtues: wisdom, discipline, love, and courage. And then modern science has five virtues that they have discovered are most highly correlated with your well-being and flourishing, which include hope and gratitude, curiosity, zest, and love again. So love is twice. The hero's secret weapon is love. In the ancient world, Greeks named the word hero. The word meant protector. I mean, it literally is a bodhisattva. That is the ancient Greco-Roman idea of a bodhisattva is a hero. And the hero's secret weapon is love. And they do the hard work to have the strength for two. In your presence, I mean, you can feel your practice. I'm literally feel like I'm in a meditation in dialogue with you. So your deep, deep embodiment of the practices that you have engaged in for such a significant period of time, there's a felt sense of your vibration, really. And I'm not one to use that word much, you know, but your tranquility that you've cultivated is felt. And that's a powerful thing. But those are the virtues that science says are most highly correlated with our flourishing, which is why I come back to them again and again and again. And again, that's nice to hear. But how do I put hope into action? How do I put gratitude or curiosity or love for that matter into action? And that's my life's mission and work is to simplify, concretize, and help people engage in the very, very basic practices that help them cultivate otherwise abstract concepts that might sound good, but might not have a real deep practical application.

Speaker 1 · 17:06Yeah. Yeah, and I like your style of writing, and since you described it before, where you you write these pithy chapters, you get in and you get out, but you inspire action. And so for those listening who want an outline, a game plan, as well as the actionable steps to become your best self in such a wide-ranging uh way that really uh touches on uh all parts of your life, including those parts of you deep down. I encourage you to check out the book, Rate. You uh have this uh summary of uh wisdom as I know the ultimate game and how to play it well, discipline, I forge anti-fragile confidence with every action I take, love, I am joyful, connected, and encouraging, courage, I am willing to act in the presence of fear, gratitude, I appreciate all the gifts and blessings in my life. I have inspiring goals, agency and pathways, curiosity, I pay attention to what's working and what needs work. Zest. I dominate my fundamentals, so I have heroic energy. And I love that love is one of the four cardinal virtues, as well as the other five that science has shown lead to well-being. And you know, with mindfulness, people like Jack Cornfield and Ram Doss express it as loving awareness. And so for those listening who are cultivating mindfulness and loving presence, I think this book will be aligned with uh your practice, your intention, as well as your heroic journey to help share love and compassion. So again, I encourage people to get the book. We'll have a link to the book in the show notes. Brian Johnson, it's been an honor to speak with you today, to meet you for the first time. I really appreciate your uh soul force and your sort of amplification of it. In closing, is there anything else that you'd like to share that we haven't covered already?

Speaker 2 · 19:56Just thank you. I closed my eyes while you were doing those virtue. That's what I meditate to. So literally, and I've been in a meditative state the entire time we've been connecting. You have such a hypnotic, soothing voice. But as you were reading those, the virtue, what I call the declarations, that's what I've said thousands and thousands and thousands of times in my head, not just when I'm meditating, but when I'm on a walk. It's kind of my mantra prayer. So to hear you say it in this context with your just palpable, soothing groundedness was awesome. So I just want to celebrate you and that. And it's been a real joy to connect with you. I appreciate your expression of your truths, and it's been an honor to connect.

Speaker 1 · 20:38Likewise. And where can people find you? Where would you like people to go?

Speaker 2 · 20:45Yeah, the best place is probably heroic. So heroic.us is the website. You can find our app in your iOS or Android stores, heroic, the training platform. And then the book, again, Rate. You can, you know, read if you're not quite ready to get the book yet. We've got a first X chapters and the Ford by Phil Stutz that you can find at heroic.us slash book and learn more about some of the themes we talked about today. Those would be the best places. And again, just so thrilled to be connected, excited about continuing our conversation in 2024 and beyond. And bless you and your community.

Speaker 1 · 21:22Thank you so much, Brian. Likewise, Sam, to you. Thanks again. Deep bass.

Speaker 2 · 21:28Right back. Thank you, Sean.