How to Train Your Mind: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and the Mindset of Excellence | Brian Johnson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show Episode Title: How to Train Your Mind: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and the Mindset of Excellence | Brian Johnson Host: Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Guest: Brian Johnson, Founder of Heroic
Release Date: June 3, 2025

---

Introduction

In this episode of The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon engages in a profound conversation with Brian Johnson, the visionary founder of Heroic—a public benefit corporation dedicated to character development and behavioral change. Brian shares his journey from a business entrepreneur to a modern-day philosopher, emphasizing the fusion of ancient philosophies like Stoicism with contemporary behavioral science to cultivate excellence and resilience.

Notable Quote:

"What if the problem isn't your lack of motivation? What if the real issue is that no one ever gave you the science or the structure to actually change?"
—Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [00:00]

---

Brian Johnson’s Journey to Philosophy

Brian Johnson recounts his transition from entrepreneurship to becoming a philosopher of modern times. After selling his first business at 25, he embarked on a quest to understand how to live an optimal life, deeply influenced by Stoic principles and ancient wisdom.

Notable Quote:

"I wanted to end my own life like I know the depths of despair. I had absolutely no skills, I had no habits, I had no mentorship, and I had no concept of how I could flourish in the world."
—Brian Johnson [07:44]

---

Understanding Stoicism and Arete

The conversation delves into Stoicism, an ancient philosophy focused on virtue and excellence (arete). Brian explains how Stoicism teaches the importance of distinguishing between what we can control and what we cannot, advocating for a life led by wisdom, discipline, love, and courage.

Notable Quote:

"If you're capable of being this and you're actually being that, and there's a gap between who you could have been and who you're actually being, it's in that gap in which regret, anxiety, disillusion, depression exists."
—Brian Johnson [08:11]

---

Antifragility: Turning Challenges into Growth

Brian introduces the concept of antifragility, coined by Nassim Taleb, which goes beyond resilience. Antifragile individuals not only withstand challenges but also grow stronger because of them. This concept parallels the philosophy of muscle-centric medicine, where physical strength is built through overcoming physical stress.

Notable Quote:

"The worse we feel, the more committed we are to our protocols."
—Brian Johnson [12:13]

---

Practical Protocols for Behavior Change

Brian outlines actionable steps for listeners to implement in their daily lives:

1. Identify Core Behaviors: Determine the actions you engage in when at your best in areas of energy, work, and love.
2. Establish Identity: Define your self-image based on these core behaviors.
3. Commit to Protocols: Stick to routines in nutrition, movement, and sleep to maintain high energy levels and psychological stability.

Notable Quote:

"The version of you that does the things you do when you're at your best will outperform the version of you that isn't doing those things every single time."
—Brian Johnson [26:33]

---

Overcoming Failures and Building Emotional Stamina

The dialogue addresses how to handle setbacks without self-condemnation. Brian emphasizes the importance of recognizing failures as inevitable and using them as opportunities to reinforce commitment to one's protocols. He introduces the concept of the "Equanimity Game," which focuses on quickly recovering from setbacks.

Notable Quote:

"The most creative act in the universe is the speed with which you can recover from falling short."
—Brian Johnson [50:49]

---

Raising Heroic Children

Brian shares insights on parenting, emphasizing the cultivation of virtues in children to prepare them for future leadership and challenges. He discusses the importance of mentoring children based on their individual goals and connecting virtues to their passions.

Notable Quote:

"It is no measure of well-being or health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
—Brian Johnson [63:28]

---

Conclusion and Mission for the Future

Brian outlines his mission to help 51% of humanity flourish by 2051, inspired by positive psychology. He encourages listeners to embody virtues and take actionable steps toward personal excellence and societal impact.

Notable Quote:

"We are going to help create a world through our scientific research in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051."
—Brian Johnson [72:31]

---

Final Thoughts

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and Brian Johnson conclude the episode by reinforcing the importance of discipline, wisdom, and love in achieving personal and communal greatness. They inspire listeners to adopt practical protocols and cultivate virtues to lead heroic lives.

Closing Quote:

"Subscribe, share, and step into the protocol your future self will thank you for."
—Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [75:07]

---

This episode weaves together philosophical insights and scientific approaches, providing listeners with a robust framework to cultivate excellence, resilience, and a meaningful life.

Transcript

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I'm Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and today I'm bringing you a conversation that fuses ancient philosophy with cutting edge behavioral science. Brian Johnson is the founder of Heroic, a public benefit corporation backed by over 2,500 investors. He's trained over 10,000 coaches, created a science backed protocol and built one of the most ambitious systems for character change on the planet. We talk about the real signs of behavior change, why habits don't stick, why most wellness apps fail, and what the data says about building a life worth living. But we also talk about what happens when you don't feel heroic, when you fail, when you're tired, when you want to quit. So what if the problem isn't your lack of motivation? What if the real issue is that no one ever gave you the science or the structure to actually change? This is the episode you show your future self what you're ready for. Bryan Johnson, founder of Heroic welcome to the show.

[Brian Johnson]

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Great to be here with you.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I want to tell you a story you now you are an unusual guest for the podcast. The podcast is typically a health and wellness podcast and medicine. But I would say that at the root of all of those things is an ability to think and live well. And there is no other expert that I have watched for over, I don't know, 15 years, which is wild. Do it better. And I'm going to share with you when I first found you. So we have a, it's kind of a funny little story because my dad is here visiting from Ecuador. He was so excited to meet you. I mean, I have been hearing about you almost every day. Did you see what Brian, you know his philosopher's notes on this and he's quoted this today. Now my dad is actually, he went to Wharton, graduated third in his class, was up for Rhodes scholar, captain of his wrestling team. I mean this is a guy who really loves to think deeply. But where I originally found you was on YouTube about 10 or so, maybe longer years ago, looking for my own philosophy. You were living in Bali, you were not yet married and your wife was talking about your now wife, I think of 18 years was talking about how when she saw you that she knew she was to be your wife and she traveled, I guess she somehow met you and messaged you on the Internet. Is that true?

[Brian Johnson]

I love this backstory. Is that true? I did not know this until right now. This is so fantastic.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is that true? She likes.

[Brian Johnson]

It's a pretty crazy story. She heard about me. She saw the site I was running at the time and said I'm going to marry that guy. Then she moved across the country three blocks away from me before we had our first date. It was just a crazy story.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Did she know that you lived three blocks away?

[Brian Johnson]

No, I had no idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And I think that that just goes to say there are people that find each other and I think that there are communities that build in ways that are unexplainable. And fast forward. So I saw you and what site were you. What site was it that you were.

[Brian Johnson]

Working on at the time? Yeah, it was called Zods site. So it was a. Before Facebook social platform. John Mackey of Whole Foods had invested in us. And it was a long time ago. Less gray whiskers, more hair. Let's go.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Isn't that wild? And then I saw you talk and then somehow I saw her talking about her experience. And I was just really interested in the content that you were putting out. And at the time I was also searching. I mean, I was early on in my medical career. It's very vigorous and it's a rigorous sacrifice kind of training when it's done well. And it's unusual. And there you were.

[Brian Johnson]

Wow.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Fast forward to then. Mark Devine, a longtime mentor who introduced me to my Navy SEAL husband, who you actually have known Mark for years. And then we fast forward a couple more years. Have a close relationship in the special operations community.

[Brian Johnson]

Such a small world.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And here you are.

[Brian Johnson]

And here we are. Let's go.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That's crazy.

[Brian Johnson]

It is crazy. And I get to meet your dad today. Oh, it's true.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I mean, I don't know. Your life must just work in a serendipitous type of way.

[Brian Johnson]

As does yours. Yeah. I feel super blast.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And I want to know. You are a modern day philosopher and from what I understand, there is a heavy focus on stoicism. I want to know what that is and I want to know how you came into this world.

[Brian Johnson]

Came into the world of being a philosopher.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Well, yeah, not necessarily the birth of Jesus.

[Brian Johnson]

I mean, it's all influencing everything else, you know. But I'll skip the origin story from the origin and move into the stoicism kind of came out of. And the whole philosopher thing for me is the etymology of the word philosopher, as you know, is Philo Sophia a lover of wisdom. So I just became passionate after I sold my first business 25 years ago.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

How old were you?

[Brian Johnson]

25. You know, 25, 26, I think. And I had enough to take a little bit of time after I transitioned to the company that bought our company. And I remember sitting. I was in La Jolla and I remember sitting out doing an exercise from how to think like Leonardo da Vinci. You had to write 101 questions down. I get good goosebumps right now talking about it. I can remember it like he was yesterday, right? And long story short, he asked a question. How can you get paid to do what you love to do? So I remember writing that down, putting on the shower head, taking a bath and looking at it and contemplating that. And what I love to do was to study how can I live an optimal life. And Again, this is 25 years ago. And how can I get paid? Helping others to do that. So that's the origin of the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, and just a deep, deep passion to understand what all of the best ancient wisdom traditions and modern science have to say about how to live a good, noble, truly great. I know that might be one of the themes we explore today, a truly great, noble, virtuous life. And then just went all in on it. Had enough time, you know, resources to take a bit of time, and traveled a bit and studied some of my favorite teachers around the world, you know, and just fully immersed myself in understanding how you apply that ancient wisdom, modern science, to live a great life in the modern world.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Why was it so important?

[Brian Johnson]

That's a great question. I mean, I just felt this urge, felt this passion to. To understand how to live a good life. I'm sure my own suffering, you know, my family's kind of background. My father struggled with alcohol. His father struggled with alcohol, ended his own life. And just, you know, I went through my own psychological challenges and really wanted to understand how to master myself, but. But to do so for something bigger than myself. Catholic school for 12 years. Good Catholic boy. How do I serve, you know, just that hunger? And I also had a very, very low tolerance for doing anything that didn't feel aligned with a deeper purpose. Dropped out of law school. You know, I've made some very, very big kind of pivots and decisions in my life to go all in on this. So very low threshold for doing things I didn't feel called to do. And a deep, deep passion to truly master these ideas and to share what I've been learning.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You've put out over 700 philosopher's notes, and you've studied Marcus Aurelius. You've studied these incredible people. And I would argue that there's going to be a time when we are no longer here that people are studying what you put out. And as you think about history, what are some of the key components that you have learned to live a great life first.

[Brian Johnson]

I appreciate that, and being worthy of that and having the ambition to make a difference at scale, you know, and to embody the qualities I admire in my heroes, including the Epictetuses and the Aureliuses, etc. But the thing that I've found that I think is central to everything, not just the Stoics, but you can go back to the ancient Greeks and you can go across all cultures and you'll find the same exact wisdom shared tattooed my body with the one word summation. If you were to ask the ancient Stoics, whether it's Seneca or Epicus or Aurelius, how to live a good life, they would have answered you in a single word, which is arete. And the word translates as virtue or excellence, but means something closer to being your best self, moment to moment to moment. And I like to say, if you're capable of being this and you're actually being that, and there's a gap between who you could have been and who you're actually being. And of course there often is, but it's in that gap in which regret, anxiety, disillusion, depression, if you do it long enough exists. It's more nuanced than that, obviously, but it's also that simple when you close the gap, when you express your best self, you live with virtue, you live with excellence. You experience what the ancients called eudaimonia, the summum bonum of a good life, a good soul. You, daimon, you feel that you're expressing your best self in the midst of hardship. This isn't about pina colada at the side of the pool.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Does it not matter matter when things are going well?

[Brian Johnson]

Well, it's especially important that you practice these ideas when things are going poorly. So disaster is virtue's opportunity.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Seneca says disaster is virtues, opportunity.

[Brian Johnson]

So those challenges that we face, and this is part of, of other, other arm you know, we have talked about, and you do a lot of work with special forces like this is what they have me talk about. So when life hits you hard, what do you do? So Nassim Taleb coined the word antifragility, right? So the opposite of fragility isn't resilience. The opposite of fragility is anti fragility. And the metaphor Jonathan Haidt uses, who's the only other guy who really talks about antifragility much, is imagine a cup on this table. If it's a plastic well, if it's a wine glass, and you knock it over, it will shatter. It's fragile. If it's a plastic cup, you knock it over, it will bounce around, it's resilient. But what would happen if you knocked a cup off a table and it somehow got stronger? That would be anti fragility. So operationalizing that and the metaphor that Taleb uses is the wind will extinguish a candle that's fragile, but the same wind will fuel a fire. So the question is, how are we showing up? Are we fragile? Are we resilient? Which is better than being fragile? Or are we antifragile? Can we use life's challenges as an opportunity to get better? And the worse we feel, the more committed we are to our protocols, which I know we'll talk about today as well.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, that's fascinating, this idea of antifragile, because ultimately in the idea of muscle centric medicine, it's focusing. And I think this is one area where you and I are very much aligned.

[Brian Johnson]

Yes. I love you, Loric. Let's go.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is this idea of how do we understand muscle as this largest organ system? And it is this tissue that cannot be bought, cannot be bargained for. It's much like this idea of being antifragile. It must be earned. It has to be earned. And, and with the outcome of earning muscle, you become more diligent, you become more discerning, you become more disciplined. So I would almost say it's stoicism in real form in the musculature.

[Brian Johnson]

When you look at the. I mean, even in your. The scientist here. But the mechanics. The first thing I did after I sold my first business was become a trainer. So I realized that, look, if I'm going to have a shot at actualizing my potential, I have to get my energy dialed in. And this is 25 years ago, you know, now we know mitochondria is the heart of everything. But even building muscle, what do you have to do? You have to leave your comfort zone. By definition, you must overload your current capacity. Not, not foolishly, but enough to push yourself to grow.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I really love this conversation with Brian Johnson. And let's face it, every hero needs to stay hydrated. And hydration is very important. And we typically recommend half your body weight in ounces, which makes a lot of water to drink. You know, frankly, I struggle to drink straight water. So adding in element has been key for me for a number of reasons. Number one, I don't get enough electrolytes in my food. And when I am drinking straight water, well, I Don't know. I don't seem to recover as well. Element has been great for me and my family. I'm very excited for the summer because I'm going to be using element lemonade has 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 60 milligrams of magnesium. I have less headaches, muscle cramps, although I still get my husband to rub my feet. You can get your free Element sample pack with any [e-mail] DrLion and again, I wanted to thank one of the sponsors of the show, Element. You can also try Elements new sparkling bold 16 ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. So if you are trying to get away from diet soda for whatever reason, then this is a great alternative.

[Brian Johnson]

That is literally another perfect metaphor of what it takes to be antifragile. We get that in the, in the gym, although most of us don't practice that. And I love your influence or your focus on let's worry about fat loss less and more about gaining strength and muscle. Right? But what if we approached our life's challenges the same way? So we go to the gym. We'd never lift styrofoam weights, right? Ever. Yet in our lives when challenges hit us, those are our spiritual weights, yet we want to avoid them. We think something's wrong with us, we shame ourselves. What if we lifted them the same way we do at the gym? And again, that sounds nice. How do you take that off the bumper sticker and make it a practical part of your reality but using the exact same overload recovery then you're stronger aspect in our psychological and emotional and creative lives relationship, all the things, you know, seeing discomfort as the source of growth.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You know, you and I both work with this special operations community and I think about this a lot because of my husband and some of the other individuals that we take care of in our medical practice, some of them are born with particular attributes and maybe they have this threshold where they see horrific things and they don't encode it in the same way. And there's other individuals that we have to really push on that needle to take action to make us stronger. And I just wonder, as You've had a 25 year experience from where you started to where you are now, the person that you were then to where you are now, how has that transformed? And was it, I mean it wasn't overnight, but there were probably big moments where you go, okay, like I, I got this and this is going to prove that I'm worthy of becoming the person that I know that I can be.

[Brian Johnson]

Yes, on that scale. Bless the people that were born with that, that. That resilience gene or the antifragile gene. I was not. So I can playfully say now with the background I described with my father and his father, that I seem to have lost both the genetic and environmental lotteries on that one. Look, 25 years ago, I wanted to end my own life like I know the depths of despair. I had absolutely no skills, I had no habits, I had no mentorship, and I had no concept of how I could flourish in the world. So I know what it feels like to feel that. I know what it feels like to feel its opposite. And I have a decent sense of what I did to incrementally aggregate and compound the little gains to get to a point. You know, we all have highs and lows, obviously, but to have that level of stability. I think this is what my deepest passion is, is in whether it's the special forces. When I, when I do, what I do with them, it's, you must train these things. You train them on the battlefield, but we have to train them how to win off the battlefield. There are psychological skills, much of which is based in stoicism. And modern cognitive behavioral therapy is stoicism. If you look at Aaron Beck and you look at the founders of cbt, they're drawing on Epictetus and the, the stoic wisdom base. So teaching these skills and almost it's basic training. I mean, in basic training, are we teaching these fundamental skills of how to live with wisdom and discipline and love and courage, such that they can win on the battlefield and off the battlefield, on the home front, et cetera. But these are teachable skills that the greater the stress, the greater the need for this wisdom. And so that's a big part of my life's work, not just with the military, but with everybody else. I mean, you look at the numbers now of anxiety, depression, and this is why I'm such a fan of you and your work. To reflect back, why I'm such a big advocate for you is okay, I've got a few favorite kind of go to teachers and particularly with nutrition, you know, it's you, Georgia Ead. I deeply admire her nutritional psychiatry approach I find extraordinary. Peter T. I admire for a lot of different reasons, and I've literally mash it up. Chat GPT. Tell me what Gabriel Lyon, Georgie E. Peter and Tia would say about this and your. Your focus on the protein, the muscle, the overall kind of lifestyle choices that we make that, that create the energy. I mean, energy is everything to me. If you can't get out of bed because of poor lifestyle choices and your mitochondria is dysfunctional, good luck showing up in your work or your love. So we obsess about all the core fundamentals, and again, the greater the stress, the greater the need to dominate your fundamentals. And that's the eating, the moving, the sleeping, the breathing, the focusing your mind is what we come back to relentlessly.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

What is Stoicism?

[Brian Johnson]

So Stoicism is an ancient philosophy created by Zeno, who fascinatingly arrived in Athens via shipwreck. So the founder of Stoicism literally arrived in Athens, washed up on the shore, which is just such a perfect story. A wealthy guy who lost everything and yet found the most important thing, which is he passionately studied the different philosophies of his day and created Stoicism. It was called Stoicism because he taught on his stoa, which was a painted porch in Athens. But ultimately, it's a philosophy that's very rational, that encourages us to recognize the fact that some things are within our control and other things are not. And we would be wise to focus on the few things that are within our control, which are our thoughts to an extent. Obviously not all thoughts. But after an initial response, we do have a choice as to where we put our focus and most importantly, our behaviors. And the philosophy, as I said, is summarized in that single word, living with arete, but to live with virtue. And the cardinal virtues of ancient Stoicism are reflected in ancient Greece and Buddhism and Hinduism and Taoism and Confucianism. It's what modern science founded the positive psychology movement on. They started by studying all those wisdom traditions, all of whom told us, a good noble life is a virtuous life. Live with wisdom, discipline, love and courage. Those are the four cardinal virtues. They use some different words. They called discipline, temperance. They called love justice. But in my work I modernize that. Justice is love. If you read Marcus Aurelius and his commitment to service, playing his role well, it's goosebumps, inspiring. And then again, temperance. Don't drink too much, don't eat too much. That's really discipline. That's self mastery. That is the greatest predictor of your well being. Can you get yourself to do what you need to do, whether you feel like it or not? I mean, that, that is, science says, twice as predictive of academic performance for kids in school than their iq. Again, if you know a kid's iq.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You have to get These foundational principles in place in education.

[Brian Johnson]

But I mean, I shared that with a leading prep school in la and they immediately commissioned me to create content because my point was, look, willpower out predicts IQ for academic performance by a factor of two. That's insane when you think. It makes sense when you think about it. But it's also, to me, insane when you first think about it. And you can teach willpower, yet we are not how this is. I mean, look at the greatest, you know, the best selling book right now in self development. I really admire James Clear, his work with atomic habits. He's. There's a science to habit change, which is one aspect of willpower and discipline, an incredibly important one. But you can teach kids how to cultivate that ability to again, do what needs to get done, whether they feel like it or not. Installing habits, deleting habits. And we can talk about.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, I would love to hear some kind of. You know, we do have a lot of parents that listen to this and if they aren't parents yet, we'll convince you how important and how amazing these little humans are to our.

[Brian Johnson]

Oh, bless. I'm thinking of your little heroes. I get the little hero.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, I sent you that shirt. My little son, he goes, he just, you know, yelled heroic and puts his arms up. It's just unbelievable.

[Brian Johnson]

Well, I'll tell you what, in 2051, which is a big part of my mission, the individuals who will be running the world are in high school right now. And so the question is, are we teaching these kids who will be running the world how to live a good, noble, virtuous life? I mean, it's truly a tragedy when you think about it, that these kids and their parents and the faculty and the broader community are not being taught the most basic fundamentals of how to live a good, again, noble, virtuous life. And these are all teachable. So it's one of the things I'm most excited about and proud of with our work is the work we're now doing with the educational system. And again, we can boost someone's self efficacy, their belief they can do something in 30 days. With Sony Lyubomirski, the world's leading basic researcher. These are not complex ideas.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

What would be a start? What would be a protocol if we were. And you have an amazing heroic app. My dad, again, your number one biggest fan, showing me the quotes and the warriors discipline. What if someone was listening and they said, okay, well after this show, I want to know what I can take to implement today. What would you tell them.

[Brian Johnson]

Beautiful question. So then I had a chat with one of the country's best basketball coaches, right? And we were talking about exactly this. And what I, what we help people do is identify the behaviors that you engage in when you're at your best. So there are certain things that you do when you're at your best. We break it down into what we call the big three. So Sigmund Freud, with whom I don't agree on most things, said, a good life is two things. Your work and your love. If you can get your work and your love dialed in, you're doing pretty well. To which I say yes. And if your energy sucks because of poor lifestyle choices, read Gabrielle Lyons book and figure out how you can get your energy dialed in. Then you can show up powerfully in your work and your love. So my question for myself every single day is, who are you at your best and what do you do in your energy, your work and your love? A practical example, like literally shared yesterday with this coach who had worked with Trevor Moad, who's recently passed, but a brilliant peak performance psychologist, worked with some elite athletes and special forces, et cetera. I believe too he worked with Tiger Woods. Tiger was at his peak and then he had some tough times and he sat down with him and he said, hey Tiger, Write down the 10 things you were doing when you were at your absolute best.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Hey, I have big news to share. One of our sponsors, AG1, just launched their next generation formula. You know, just when I thought they couldn't have raised the bar anymore, they did. Same single scoop once a day, but now with even more vitamins and minerals, an upgraded probiotic blend. And this is a game changer. It is now clinically backed by four human clinical trials. That's right. And by the way, that is almost unheard of in the world of supplements. Most greens powders don't even come close to this level of testing. In one of the trials, AG1 Next Generation was shown to increase healthy gut bacteria significantly and of course help fill nutrient gaps even in people who already eat well. This isn't fluff, it's peer reviewed science. And it shows up in how you feel, whether it's any energy, digestion, immunity. All of it for me, AG1 and for my mom is non negotiable. It's not about replacing food, it's about having a daily insurance policy for my health. Listen, I don't eat perfect. And this is clean, comprehensive and it allows me to be consistent. And now with this upgraded formula. Holy cow. No Better time to try it. Here's what I got for you. And now, clinically backed with an advanced formula, this is a perfect time to try ag1. I've been drinking ag1 since the cows have come home and I'm so proud, proud to be partnering with them. Subscribe [e-mail] Dr. Lyon. You'll get a free bottle of AG D3K2 and an AG1 Welcome Kit, plus five travel packs on this upgraded formula with your first order. That's drinkag1.com drlion and you will feel the difference.

[Brian Johnson]

So Tiger's like, sure, let me do that. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10. Follow, follow up question. How many of those things are you doing now? He's doing like five of them. It's not too complicated. The version of you that does the things you do when you're at your best will outperform the version of you that isn't doing those things every single time. So when I work with teams, in particular, this is my story is, look, you tell me who's going to win? Player one, who's doing all the things that they do when they're at their best, not perfectly, but more consistently, or player one, who's not that player will outperform this player. You put the group together on a team, this team will beat that team every time. They may or may not beat the opponent.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I love that.

[Brian Johnson]

But they'll always do it. So that'd be. That is literally what I do every day. I don't have, do I? Yeah, every day. I'm quickly journaling my identities. Energy, work and love. So in energy, I'm a disciplined athlete.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I mean, you're very fit. You always can tell. You know, I, Matt and I, my producer, we always make jokes and fitness is huge, man. Being able to. If you are talking about medicine or the mind, we have an expectation that individuals should be fit. And it doesn't have. You don't have to be.

[Brian Johnson]

You think, you think that when I go to my, my brother's oncologist, he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and he can't get rid of a cough. And he's. He's carrying an extra 20, 30, 40 pounds. He's giving me sugar way into the PET scan. Our medical professionals should be the embodiment of elite fitness to me, and the fact that they are not says a lot. And again, deep admiration for the things that work within our current system. And yeah, looking at you and looking at those who are deeply committed to being in integrity with these ideas in helping us solve these health challenges before they become crises is so key. But energy. I have a certain identity.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And then when you say identity, do you mean. What does that mean?

[Brian Johnson]

This is another James Clear. I always talked about this, but James Clear, I never knew the etymology. And I love. I'm kind of a nerd with that. You know, I used to read the dictionary as a kid kind of thing, right? But in Atomic Habits, he gave me the etymology for identity. I always talked about your identity needs to drive your behaviors, which drives your feelings, not the other way around. Identity, behaviors, feelings. Not feelings, behavior, identity. But then James Clear said, identity literally means etymologically repeated beingness. So your sense of self, your self image, which is unbelievably important, you will never outperform a poor self Image. Peak performance 101. Your identity is who you think you are and who you consistently act like. So what you want to do is you want to hit both sides of that. You want to have a clear identity of you at your best. So you are. For me, I'm a disciplined athlete. So I want to show up, and I often. It's a soft athlete, and I want to show up like a CEO. I want to show up like a warrior who does what they need to do, whether they feel like it or not. And then you got to do those things. Then you affirm that that's like me. That's like me to be the guy that does these things. That's how I frame up identity. But then I connect it to virtues. So again, in a single word, it's arete or virtue. But then we got to take that out of the abstract and make it more concrete. So every day, I want to show up with discipline. I want to be disciplined, calm, confident, energized, tranquil, and poised. Those are my. My core virtues and energy. And then I have certain behaviors I engage in. I did 101 burpee workout. That's one of the things I do every day for I don't know how long. Right?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Amazing.

[Brian Johnson]

But I do. Frankly, I do as little as I possibly can. I'm checking in, and the dude's like, hey, I asked, you have a rowing machine, you know, at the high end, whatever, down the street? He's like, no, we don't. And his. At the risk of being a modest response, was that how you got so shredded? I'm like, no, actually, it's 90%. It's 90% nutrition, more protein, less carbs. In fact, I'm going on a podcast Tomorrow with Gabriel Lyon. Literally, this is what I told him. Like, check it out. Forever strong. He goes to his computer, starts typing it in. It was just awesome. But for me, it's. I want efficiency, you know, I want to do what I can to get what I want and spend no more time than necessary on that. Anyway, I do that for my energy, I do it for my work, I do it for my love. And I want to identify the few things I do that if I do them, it's very hard to have a bad day. Very hard for me to have a bad day. When I'm in bed for eight and a half to ten hours a night, I'm doing my. I do a sun salutation, 10 pull ups, 100 burpees, a thousand meters of rowing and 10,000 steps every day. Love that, right? And then I'm. I love that following my nutrition protocol, boom. Really genuinely, I'll have ups and downs, but it's hard to have a circus.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Because when I set a standard too.

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah. And then the follow on for antifragility is the worse I feel, the more life is hammering me, the more committed I am to those three things. So then my question back to your community is, what are your three things? What are the three things you do in your energy that just keep you plugged in? That when you look back at your past, when you were most on, you were doing this, this and this. So then my question is, are you doing it now and then the next time life hits you, rather than go for the bottle of wine or the sugary food or the Netflix binging? With respect, we all do our own idiosyncratic addictive things. What if in that moment, rather than being the candle that's extinguished by the challenges of the wind, you are the fire that gets fueled by the wind and you double down in your protocol. You more fiercely do the things you do when you're at your best, when you feel your worst, everything changes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I love that. And it's deeply personal, right? So you said tranquility and calm. I mean, those things are very personal. Takes also a lot of thinking. It sounds like greatness takes a lot of thinking about as opposed to, you know, who am I when I show up and thinking about having a self image? And I bet you, because we're not really trained to think that many people have a gap in that. And that's a real opportunity.

[Brian Johnson]

I think the average attention span is 47 seconds right now. So, yes, we need to step back from the screens long enough to ask ourselves some Important questions, you know, and that takes discipline. It takes wisdom to know that there's a bigger game and even greatness. As we were preparing for our chat today, you know, there's greatness of the self, which is kind of what everybody's selling right now. You know, the fame, the hotness, the wealth, that sort of thing. And then there's greatness of the soul. So the Greeks talked about this as well, the Stoics. The word magnanimous literally means great soul. Mahatma. Mahatma Gandhi means great soul. So there's an interesting delineation between the extrinsic measures of greatness in our current society. In 2500 years ago, they had the same challenge.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And how is that? You would think that it would be a lot different.

[Brian Johnson]

You'd think. You'd think that the word arete would never have left the cultural vernacular. But why has it? Why isn't the. I mean, stoicism was the dominant philosophy for hundreds of years. And the fact.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And that simply means changing the things that you can change and accepting living with virtue.

[Brian Johnson]

So living with virtue would be, look, life is happening. I don't have control over that person or that political situation or this or that, this natural disaster. I have control over how I respond. Respond with virtue. Be your best self. Live with wisdom, discipline, love, courage. And then disaster, as we said Seneca says, is virtue's opportunity. Boom. You're in the gym. You're in the spiritual soul gym right now. Lift the weights, quit complaining. Walk out of the gym and go numb yourself. Stay in the heat and actually do the work to forge your next level of excellence.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And you have a team, and obviously you have a family. Do you have them all begin to think about their. As you. You know, you have many protocols and many processes. Do you have them create a self image of the targets that they.

[Brian Johnson]

100%. It's a condition of their employment team.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

We are implementing that today.

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah, I mean, we frankly struggle with it. Of how much do we do? What do we do? How do we do it? But it's so important to us that our team is culturally aligned. And you mentioned one of the important facets of what we've tried to build. We want structure and we want idiosyncratic expression.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Thank you to one of our sponsors for this episode. You know, I look pretty good for 65, and I only bring on sponsors whose products I genuinely use and love. Just kidding. I'm not 65, but I am not kidding about absolutely loving one skin. And after seeing my girlfriend's skin, I'VE told this story many times. I wanted to know what she was doing. Turns out it wasn't plastic surgery or at least it hasn't been up to this point. And she'd been using one skin. I tried it. I love it. I use it on my face, I use it on my body, I use it wherever I have skin and it has been amazing. I think that it has improved my skin's texture. And I was thinking to myself, okay, well what makes it better? Well, it has a novel clean, science backed ingredient. Well, it has many ingredients, but one in particular. It has this peptide that supports DNA repair and targets root cause skin aging. And listen, it's summer is coming up and I use their broad spectrum face, sunscreen, eye cream, topical body, hard to find a skincare line that delivers real results. But I have found it and I know that you're going to love this product. You can get [e-mail] you can get 15% off oneskin with the code doctorlion.

[Brian Johnson]

So my identities are different than yours. Everyone on our teams, your virtues are different and in energy, work and love. But the commitment to being our best self is shared. So aura has the readiness score, sleep score, Whoops. Got its thing. Ours is called a Soul Force score. So when you show up every day and you do the things you said you would do, which is part of our protocol, every morning you commit, you recommit to being your best self, setting your intention, attention, action follows. Every day you do those things, you get a point. Point. You go from 80, 81, 82, 85, 90. After 21 days, you get to 101. Then you earn your trident. Today you go back to 100. You got to do it again. You get to 101. So literally that Soul Force score is a. Our team demonstrates their commitment again in their own idiosyncratic ways. Or we're blessed to have passionate individuals on our team and people that want to be on our team. And so just having that standard set and the shared, you know, commitment to being our best selves in service to something bigger than ourselves is a really, really big part of our culture. Same with our coaches that we train. And again, everyone does it differently. But that's a really important part of what we do.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You've seen what thousands of people go through these programs, taken care of thousands. And coached thousands of individuals. Is that, is that fair to say?

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah, we've had over 10,000.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay.

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah. From our coaching program.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is there something that seems to unifyingly hold individuals back as humans, as Having human nature.

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah, it's great. So. So my coach is a guy named Phil Stutts, who I just love. He was in Jonah Hill's Stutz on Netflix. And his favorite teacher is Rudolf Steiner. So Rudolf Steiner says there are two things, two things that most hold people back. Fear and laziness. Now, fear and laziness are the opposite of two virtues, right? So the opposite of fear is what? Courage. It's not the absence of fear, it's the willingness to act in the presence of fear is what courage is. And then laziness, of course, is the opposite. Or the vice of deficiency of discipline. You can have a vice of excessive discipline and be so rigid that you break anything anytime it doesn't go right. So I would offer those two are what drive me. You like every, every human being who's ever existed, fear and laziness. The opposite of wisdom is foolishness. The opposite of love is kind of a selfishness or an apathy or something that's. It's all about you, you know, or a nihilism sort of thing. So again, what about you?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is it indifference?

[Brian Johnson]

Of course. Well, hate indifference, which is worse. You know, you have an active expression of, of, of the opposite of love and then a passive expression. But they're both vices.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

How does one know that they are pursuing greatness versus this ego based drive?

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah, I think that to me, we got to delineate greatness of the self and greatness of the soul. And, and I don't like the way most people use the word ego. I think the ego is very, very important. I think the ego is what keeps you in the game. From a Freudian perspective, there's the ego, then there's the ID and the super ego. The ID is your impulse. You can't get yourself to stop your addictive behaviors. The superego is you got to impress everybody. You're conditioned by your parents in society. So an ego keeps you strong and in the game. But the ego needs to be plugged into something bigger than yourself. So if you're chasing fame, wealth and hotness, and that's kind of your thing, those are what scientists would call extrinsic motivators. And they've existed for 2500 years. This is not a 21st century challenge. This is 2,500 years old. Scientists say if you are pursuing the extrinsic measures of success or greatness, fame, wealth and hotness, even if you are successful in your pursuit of those things, you will be less psychologically stable than people who are focused on the intrinsic aspects of flourishing, which include deeper relationships, becoming a better person, and making a difference in your community. There's nothing wrong inherently, obviously, with fame, wealth, and hotness. In fact, they're often reflective of value that's been created and hard work that's been done. But we want to make sure, again, Phil says 51%, 49%.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I was just going to ask you.

[Brian Johnson]

At what, 51% spiritual, 49% material. You don't need to be 100% spiritual. Zero. If that's your thing, go move to the Himalayas and float, you know, levitate or whatever, you know. But for almost all of us, it's going to be somewhere in between 99% and 1%. He says 51, 49. And I think that we all know we can check in, we can pause. And if we're feeling that, that franticness, I mean, 78, 85% of people feel burned out right now. Take a break. Pause, step back again. Read your book, get your mitochondria functioning well. Put the screen down. Think about these things, and start thinking about how you can live with more virtue. This is Stephen Covey as well. If Stephen Covey was alive today, who is one of my favorite modern teachers. I mean, he's rolling over in his grave right now. What passes for self development, he talked about 30 years ago. But begin with the end in mind, he says, and his ultimate end is, and I do this every time I do anything. It's your own eulogy. It's your own funeral. So at the end of your life, who's going to say what? They're not going to talk about your Instagram followers and how much money you had or the square footage in your house or how many houses. That's not the conversation. They're going to talk about your virtues. So eulogy, virtues is how David Brooks puts it. He talks about it in the second mountain. There's the first mountain, which is the self demonstrating excellence. And again, that's important. And then there's the second mountain, which is you're living for something bigger than yourself. So the idea is integrating both of those things. And as we were talking about, I mean, the influencers being truly noble and virtuous and committed to something bigger than themselves.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's challenging because by definition, the idea of influencing is, you know, you question, is that a noble virtue? As opposed to trying to. And maybe, you know, I'm sure some are, some aren't. It's. It's this idea of how do we get good information out there?

[Brian Johnson]

Yep, 5149, even me and you. I mean, it's like I'm ambivalent about this all the time. Like, of course we want impact, you know, that fierce ambition of a Lincoln or someone that just even Aurelius, like these are leaders that led for something bigger than themselves. So we have to have that, that willingness to have the ambition and to show up. I mean, Abraham Lincoln was fiercely ambitious. Like his commitment to. He wanted to make history, he wanted to be remembered, be in the book of common humanity, you know, but he wanted to do it in service to humanity. Like there's, there's an important shift there of what is the motive drive here and how do we use the wealth and even the physical attractiveness. That's an asset that's important. Right? That can be.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

A lot of people check themselves, for example, on just during the day. Your life is very dynamic. I'm sure there are things coming at you all the time. Do you have spot drills? Are there moments of time or are you constantly measuring a response to something or does it become actually second nature where you know what you stand for and you're able to discern so quickly.

[Brian Johnson]

We can bring my wife in here, she'll tell you how often I fall short of that standard. You know, I'm pretty good in the energy and the work. Love is my hardest, you know, as an em vicious guy and just always more to do and all the things much easier for me to show up in my energy, my work. But I can assure you, she can assure you I will not be the first perfect human being. But I actually, I manage my day by focusing on what I can control the most of. So I call it bookends. And I got this from Darren Hardy, the compound effect. Your a.m. and p.m. bookends. You have more control over how you begin your day and end your day than the middle of your day. And I find that when I have a great PM bookend. So to me, your PM counts twice because how you end your day directly determines how you start your next day.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I think that's a really good point. How do you do it? How do you end your day?

[Brian Johnson]

A number of things. So first, last meal, I want to have my. Personally, I have my last meal four hours or so before I go to bed, get the glymph going, make sure that I've got opportunity to have great deep sleep. Digital. So there's kind of a last bite of food, last bite of inputs. We call it a digital sunset where you turn off the electronics at night. In our house, you will never see a normal light. It's red. Like, the sun goes down. Everything goes down in our family, so we're really, really rigorous in the pm, making sure I'm in bed by a certain period of time. I don't know what's on Netflix right now. I don't care what's on Netflix right now. I don't want to be watching heroes, pseudo heroes. I want to be the hero of my own story. So I think the most important thing that we teach our coaches and those we train is you got to choose. Do you want to be actualized or do you want to be entertained? And the decisions you're making.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I love that. Say that one more time.

[Brian Johnson]

Do you want to be actualized or do you want to be entertained? And this is where the discipline, the wisdom, the discipline come back in. And then the love, by the way, the other arm is heroic. Of course, the word hero in ancient Greece meant protector. Wasn't tough guy or killer of bad guys. It was protector and a hero. Secret weapon is love. So the source of our motivation, the source of our discipline, the source of our ability to get ourselves to do what we need to do is something bigger than ourselves. So anyway, for me getting people to understand the importance of the simple decisions they're making. Give yourself an extra hour of sleep. Changes your hormonal structure. It's gonna make it a lot easier to follow your nutrition protocol, you know, and you follow your nutrition protocol, by the way, yours literally specifically, and you're gonna have a better night of sleep. So the PM is how I do it, and then AM do not start your day looking at your phone. Give yourself at least an hour buffer between your last tech input and your. When you intend to go to sleep. That's our digital sunset. And the science is unequivocal on this. You need to slow your brain down, reduce the blue light to allow your melatonin to do what needs to do so you can actually fall asleep, et cetera. Be in bed for X number of hours. I target again, 8 1/2 to 10 with x percent efficiency.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, I mean, I'm still working on that. The two little ones.

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah. Bless you. And. And again, my wife and I, she's. They're 8 and 12 now, so that's. That is.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So they let you sleep.

[Brian Johnson]

Oh, four and five. Yeah, you're right in it. So I've been in it for four or five years. Bless you. And.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And Shane sleeps in the other room so he can sleep because he only gets.

[Brian Johnson]

We have the same dynamic and you are a hero. So bless you.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And, and literally what do you do when you fail? When you fail your standards that you've said or you fail a virtue? Because again, being human, you know, I was actually just really impressed watching you, how you've managed your life, it's just tremendous. And I know that even people like you still have struggles and we still have to course correct. How do you do that and how do you experience it?

[Brian Johnson]

So Abraham Maslow is one of my favorite teachers and heroes. Came up with this self actualizing individual, right? The pyramid hierarchy of needs. The top wasn't self actualizing though. It was self transcendence. You have to have a strong self, then move beyond the self. But he said that there are no perfect human beings. There are great human beings and he studied Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt. Some of the true, he calls them movers and shakers. But there has never once been a perfect human being. So the relentless thing I'm teaching our community and reminding myself is there are no perfect human beings. And the thing that makes people derail in addition to fear and laziness is this, this expectation that you somehow, me us will somehow be. We will somehow be the first perfect human being. So the first most important thing is to have the wisdom to know you won't be okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

This concept of being heroic and being the hero of your own life brings me to one of the sponsors of the show and that is Mito Pure made by timeline. If all companies operated with such scientific rigor and excellence, then the entire landscape of health would be changed. I love Mitopure because it gives me energy, energy to show up in the way that I want to. And we have all of these thoughts about what we're going to do in the world, but you have to be consistent, you have to train. And when I think about what is one of the supplements that I think is very meaningful based on evidence, I think about the postbiotic Urlithin A. And nobody has a clinically backed and researched Urolithin A on the market that is clinically proven to target the effects of age related cellular decline other than timeline. And from my perspective it is the ultimate in muscle and whole body health. By the way, I also would not be shocked if we start to see emerging data on its impact not just on strength and endurance, but on brain health. So if you are looking to level up your mitochondria, timeline is the way to go. They are offering 10% off your order of Mitopure. Go to timeline.com lion that's T I M E L I N E.com lion.

[Brian Johnson]

So then you expect the inevitable obstacles.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I like that. So you expect inevitable obstacles.

[Brian Johnson]

You have to. And this is the anti fragility again. We had the privilege of working with Notre Dame football last year, day one of their preseason, and the first thing I told him was, a hero's journey is supposed to be hard. You do not go to a hero's journey in a movie and want to watch the hero sit on a beach drinking pina coladas. You want to see them battle dragons. So the first, most important rule is it's going to be hard. And I literally told them that you don't know what dragon you're going to face, but you will face one. And the question is, what do you do when you get hit? And you need to double down in your protocol. So they lost the second game of their season toward the end, and then they came back and almost won the national championship. Reporters asked them, hey, how do you bounce back? And the kids were humble and coachable enough to say that some of what I said impacted how they responded.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Was there one thing in particular?

[Brian Johnson]

It's this. It's embracing the fact that you will face challenges because I don't know about you, but when I feel overwhelmed or stressed or fall short of my standards, it's very quick and very easy to have that. Why don't I have it figured out yet? What's wrong with me? Dialogue. And the reality is when you try to do things like you and I are trying to do, truly make a difference in the world while trying to be a great spouse and parent and do it nobly and virtuously and not go off the rails and all the other things. That's hard. But, but, but our story is it shouldn't be and something's wrong with us. And I. Goosebumps. Have to remind myself this all the time. So Phil Stutz, I mentioned in one of our early coaching sessions he completely changed my life. And I now call it antifragile confidence. He called it emotional stamina. And Phil, I don't know if. Have you seen the documentary?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I have.

[Brian Johnson]

Okay, so he kind of just goes off.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I don't know if I remember. I don't remember.

[Brian Johnson]

So he's just eclectic. 70 something year old, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant psychiatrist. Funny, F bomb dropping. Got Parkinson's. So he'll kind of go off every once in a while. So he's almost talking to himself at the end of our chat. He's like, well, you've got a Lot of emotional stamina. Right at the end of our coaching session, you have a lot of emotional stamina, maybe the most I've seen, he said. And I have no idea what he's talking about. I'm like, that sounds great. I'll take that as a compliment. Next coaching session. I said, hey, what's emotional stamina? And he says, emotional stamina is your ability to handle the inevitable pain, uncertainty, and hard work of life and not fall apart, but to show up powerfully. I'm like, okay, follow on. Question how do I get more of it? And his answer completely changed my life. So he said, here's how you get more emotional stamina, which I call an antifragile confidence. Now, he said, the worse you feel, the more life is hammering you with pain, uncertainty, and hard work, the greater you need to be, the more committed you need to be to your protocol, the more committed you need to be to your protocol. So the more you get hit, the more committed you need to be. This is everything we've just talked about. So then going back to, what do I do when I get hit or I fall short? Phil calls it a glitch. He says, you're going to experience a glitch. It's like a fish, fish hook where you, you're connected. Then you fall short of your standards.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And you don't even know it.

[Brian Johnson]

So the first step is you got to be aware. And that's exactly the first step. Why meditation? Why just thinking about things, noticing, having a half inch separation between your thoughts.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And your behavior, doesn't that happen Sometimes everything is great and all of a sudden you, I mean, this might not.

[Brian Johnson]

Yell at your kids. How about that? Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Where you're just thinking, you know, everything is so great. And then all of a sudden you're like, how did I miss that thought that then spun out that I didn't even realize had made a ripple into.

[Brian Johnson]

For me, it tends to be physiological choices. It tends to be, I ate that and then I ate this and I went that and that. That affects me deeply. Right? And then sometimes as I did sit and move, sometimes it's a poor night of sleep. There's often a physiological answer to the interesting, much more complex psychological issues, which is why I always come back to the physiological. Much more control.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So do you use your physiology to control your psychology?

[Brian Johnson]

100 and this is. I've been saying this for 15 years. And the science is finally catching up to it. Where we can now prove through Georgia Ead her nutritional psychiatry work, our nutrition matters. We've known for a long time our movement matters. Our sleep, of course, matters. But it's becoming more central to, and it must become, in my mind, the greatest failing of the current psychiatric psychotherapeutic model is an absolute failure to recognize the importance of our underlying physiology. In my own experience, as a guy who wanted to kill himself, and I know the depths of that despair, I wouldn't be here if I didn't correct a lot of behaviors, whether it was from my own hand or from just chronic disease and whatever. We're not teaching people this. We're not teaching them basic brain hygiene. And before we try to solve complex psychological challenges, which are infinitely harder than what you decide to put in into your mouth and how much protein you're getting and how much you're moving, you control the controllables. Get those things dialed in. And then what I find and what I teach is the frequency and intensity of your psychological challenges will greatly decrease. And don't believe me. Test it again. Follow your nutrition protocol. If one does so for 15, 30, 45, 60 days. And of course, you teach the. The movement, you teach sleep, the basic fundamentals. Then tell me what your psychological profile looks like. You're still going to have challenges, but your highs are going to. So if you go like this right now, highs and lows, your highs will get higher and they'll be more authentic, and your lows will get higher. And that's a really powerful idea. And you can build the scaffolding from catastrophic despair. We lost a member of our community to suicide a month ago. Absolutely heartbreaking. Wept. Read all of his posts. Talked to one of his buddies within an hour of hearing about it. Saw his aura scores, know what he was eating, and wish I could go back and have, you know, some more conversations with him, but these things matter. Those basic physiological variables are the foundation on which we build that scaffolding, is what I was going to say. And getting to the point where, you know, if you do this, then you feel this way. And that agency, that ability to manage your own burnout and to manage your emotional overwhelm by controlling the controllables, our physiology via nutrition, movement, and sleep, it's the cornerstone of everything I do. And that's why you're so ripped. Well, hey, more protein, less carbs, and a few burpees. Let's go.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I mean, listen, you nailed it. When you fall off mentally or physically, you double down on your protocols. How do you get back psychologically? You didn't hit a standard. And this may be not so much for you. But perhaps in the beginning of your journey, you recognize that you get back to training, you get back to sleep, you get back to doing all of those things you didn't perform. Someone really pissed you off. You have no control over how someone, they're dynamic with you and you don't notice that it caused you to spin out.

[Brian Johnson]

Yep.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

How do you get back?

[Brian Johnson]

Perfect. So then you want to increase the speed with which you recover. So Marcus Aurelius called it, I call what he talked about the equanimity game. So he says that when force of circumstance, when life knocks you off your center and you lose your equanimity, see how fast you can get it back, see how quickly you can recover your equanimity. So I call it the equanimity game. Morge Ucheba, the founder of aikido, one of his students said, master, you never lose your center, which is a big part of aikido. Right. And he said, he laughed at him and said, I lose my center all the time, but I just recovered so quickly that you don't notice. So the game is how quickly can you recover? And the most important aspect is recognizing and having the self compassion and the wisdom to know you will fall short. Because most people fall short, then they beat themselves up, then they beat themselves up, and then a week later they wake up and they're hungover from whatever they did.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah.

[Brian Johnson]

So the first step is always embrace the reality that you will fall short and then make it a game. See how fast you can recover. Speed is a force is how Phil Stutt says puts it. He says, I love that the most creative act in the universe, he says, is the speed with which you can recover from falling short. So for me, I tend to fall short in, in with my kids, with the family. It's just, you know, that that's hard.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's hard, it's hard.

[Brian Johnson]

And again, all good.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And, and, and probably the same for me. It's tough.

[Brian Johnson]

So then two things I do. One, I repair. I'm sorry is a very powerful phrase. And then another mental peak performance guy, a gold medal winning rifle shooter who won the silver because he says he choked, won Olympics, then studied every gold medalist and their mental toughness between Olympics. Won the gold, he says, and he's a rifle shooter. So you got to have a clear target. You have to know your standard, what are your identities, what are your virtues, what are your targets arete. And then when you have a target, you know whether you missed it or not. But then when you miss it. If you hit it, you say that's like me. You constantly affirm your self image. You're the person, you're the person who does your burpees. You're the person who goes to sleep when you say you will. You're the person who does this.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You're the person who follows your nutrition program. You're the person who gets your blood work. So friends listening, doctors listening, how do we impart that for ourselves and our patients?

[Brian Johnson]

And that's how you build confidence. So confidence means intense trust. Confidere intense trust. If you want to build intense trust in any relationship, you invite me to hear to your podcast. If I don't show up, I would diminish your trust in me. And I should. Why should you trust me? I'm a flake. Well look, if you say you're going to do certain things, whether it's nutrition protocol, movement, time with your family, and you don't, every time you don't and you fall short and you will don't need to be perfect, but every time you do, you erode your trust. Maslow is harsh. Maslow says every single time you fall short of your ideal, you make an imprint in your consciousness. You erode your trust. So the way to build confidence, intense trust, not perfect, but more consistently, is you do what you say you will do. It's Leadership 101. Do what you say you will do anyway. You make it a game to see how fast you can get back. You affirm that's like me, when you do what you said you would do and when you don't, you don't shame yourself. You remove the emotion. You go back to the moment where you fell short and you do what Lanny Basham, the great peak performance guy says you needs. Work it. So imagine going back to the moment before you did the thing you're not proud of. And there was a, there was a choice point where you could have done the right thing, you could have lived with RT and you didn't, that's fine. But what could you have done differently in that moment? Because you could have done something different. And in fact you knew what you could have done. You could have taken a breath, you could have practiced your non violent communication. Whatever it is you do in those moments you know or don't do. And then you replay the scene as if you did it. And that's the impression you put in your consciousness. And then you let it go. Quit ruminating about it, quit shaming yourself about it and commit to being better. The next time, then you use the data. Phil calls them turds. When life happens and you fall short of your standards, it's that turd properly alchemized and he's hilarious about in the movie that becomes your fuel for the next stage of your growth. Whether that's your own shortcoming or someone letting you down or the world, you know, overwhelming you, these moments become catalysts for. They become fuel for our fire. To bring back the wind fire metaphor rather than extinguishing the candle. Then you got to go, you know, put the candle back together a week or two later. Anyway, that, that's how I strive to approach it.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I, I actually have never heard of that before and I think that that's extremely useful. Don't beat yourself up. Understand, go back with some level of neutrality and replay it of what you could have done and leave an imprint because it's probably going to show up again in your life.

[Brian Johnson]

Oh, certainly. But then you spiral up. So it's this spiraling up that you're going to face the same challenges over and over again, but you want to have a slightly higher consciousness and a slightly faster speed of recognizing it. So rather than waiting a decade or a year or a month or a week or even a day, you're able to see it an hour after or 10 minutes after or a minute after, or maybe you're able to stop it a minute before. That's the game. It's just getting a little bit better. But when you aggregate and compound that, you can completely change everything.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And your, you know, I have another question. Really, I have a few. I promise I'll keep us on time for the most part. I don't want to break my word, but just you have a lot of really important information to share for kids as we're building.

[Brian Johnson]

Lanny says, I'm gonna interject real quick. Lanny says the great rifle shooter, he once trained with a gold medalist. They said they would stop at lunch, right? And then lunch comes at noon. And the other guy keeps on shooting, keeps on shooting. Lanny waits for 15, 30 minutes. He finally goes, needs. And he says, what's going on? And the guy who was the gold medal winner at the time says, when you are on, keep shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting. Embed those imprints. So anyway, good.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I love it.

[Brian Johnson]

I have no idea what time it is. We've been going, but let's go.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Just getting warmed up, Just getting warmed up. But, you know, there's so much thoughts as we're having these conversations because you are in the business and we're in the same business, and that is the business of making better humans. You are doing it mentally and physically, and we are doing it physically and then mentally and really that's what ultimately is going to drive humanity forward and we have a real opportunity. Children. How do we think about raising heroic children?

[Brian Johnson]

Goosebumps. Again, first we think about raising heroic children. I think the idea of Krishnamurti said, it is no measure of well being or health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. So I think first and foremost, as parents.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Say that again, Say that again.

[Brian Johnson]

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. To do what everyone does in a society as sick as ours is, from the physical, physiological, psychological, etc. Is insanity. I mean, that makes no sense. It is, but yet it takes the wisdom and the discipline and the courage to do something other than what society is doing. And Ralph Waldo Emerson, after whom we named our son 150 years ago, said, society will whip you with its displeasure for your non conformity.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So society will whip you for its displeasure for your non conformity.

[Brian Johnson]

Yes, it's very difficult, it's very difficult to go to the pizza party and say, no, I'm not giving my kid endless, you know, soda.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That's right.

[Brian Johnson]

And I'm not feeding them that ultra processed food. Like it takes a heroic mindset for the parent. And then. So I think recognizing the importance of raising the next generation of heroes and that your kids are going to be among the next generation of heroes is first and foremost the most important. Then you better be practicing your philosophy. So you better be the best, most heroic version of yourself. Not perfect, but committed to embodying your ideals idiosyncratically, etc. And then what we've tried to do, we homeschool our kids. So we've made the choice. And Alexandra, my wife, has invested not just over, you know, the sleepless nights, but a lot of her creative energy into our kids, which isn't the right.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You guys also do great meditation. She does a great meditation with the.

[Brian Johnson]

Kids, you know, and again, everyone's going to have their idiosyncratic path. But it was very, very important to us that we created the culture for our family and didn't allow society to create the culture for our family, whether that's the influencers or the peers. And with respect, even the teachers, like, we wanted to have that culture set by us. So. And then we're incessantly talking about these ideals.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do they have virtues? Do you teach Them. So Emerson is 8.

[Brian Johnson]

12. 12, yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Eleanor's 8 and Eleanor's 8. Are they thinking about creating virtues for themselves and having an identity?

[Brian Johnson]

Well, a little differently. I mean, you know, explain it to me like I'm 12. You know, it's kind of the. So Emerson's into chess. That's his big thing. He got into it a couple of years ago. He wants to be a grandmaster. So perfect, let's go. You know, I get to show up kind of more as a dad than I ever have. You know, like, I get to really do what I do. We've take all these weekend trips now, you know, and in this weekend we've got a chess tournament every single time. When I drive out of our. We live in the country. Drive out our gate on the road, I say, what do you want, buddy? To me, everything starts with a target. You have to know what you want in life. What do you want, buddy? And he says, I want to be a grandmaster in different orders. And I want to be a good person. And when he says, I want to be a good person and I want to be a grandmaster, I say, right order. Then I say, how will you be a good person? And I've literally incrementally taught him the virtues. So he'll say, I live with virtue. And I'll say, amazing. What are they? And he'll think about it and he'll say, well, wisdom. And this is iteration after iteration. Discipline, love, encourage. What is wisdom? Wisdom is how to. Knowing how to live, you know. Right. What is discipline? And discipline, he'll say, is doing what you need to do, whether you want to or not. Oh, okay, cool. What's love? Being nice. Yeah, exactly. That's. That's a great demonstration of love. What's courage? Being able to do things when you're afraid. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Those are the virtues that will help you be a great person. And then how are you going to be a grandmaster? Oh, well, I'm going to do this process wise, etc. But we're constantly talking about these ideas. And look, we're talking about sugar, we're talking about insulin and how it shuttles sugar out of the bloodstream because it's toxic there. Where does it store it? It stores it in fat cells. And that's what happens when we over consume these ultra processed foods. And he gets a cold, doesn't like to get sick. 12 and 8, they've never taken one antibiotic and feel blessed. And mama nurse, you know, anytime we've ever had anything, it's dial in tripled down on the protocol. But he doesn't like being sick. So we can make the connection. Hey, we went off menu. We went here, here and here when Nama was in town, right? And then you got a little stuffy. Make the connection. He's worn an OURA ring for two years. He can coach people on what happens with the later meal and his hrv, resting heart rate, all of it, you know, and so I'm constantly trying to make the connection between the high level virtues and more importantly the specific behaviors. But I do it all through the lens of what he wants. He wants to be a grandmaster. If he wants to be a grandmaster, then let's eat, let's move, let's sleep, let's breathe. Let's focus our minds in ways that champions perform. And so parents, whenever I coach parents, it can't be you telling your kids what to do. It's knowing what your kids want and then showing them how they can get what they want through your mentorship, your leadership. The best book on the subject is called 10 to 25. It's Carol Dweck's protege.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Oh, I didn't know she had a protege.

[Brian Johnson]

I didn't either until his book came out. Dave yeager, brilliant guy. 10 to 25. Of course we have the philosopher's notes on it. I'll send to you via text. Yes, but the basic idea is parents. And he talks about the mentor mindset where you need to help kids earn competence. You got to help them feel good about their ability to achieve the things they want in life. And if you can't do that, they'll go get their competence and their prestige from their peer group. You don't want that?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

No. So not at all.

[Brian Johnson]

High standards, high warmth, be a mentor. But connect these ideas to your kids performance, whether it's on a chessboard or basketball court or whatever it is your kids are passionate about.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You know, I, we spend a lot of time researching you before we invite you on. Obviously you had a leg up because I'd known about you for the last, I don't know, 15 years. But there are a couple questions from my team that I really, I want to ask if I can. I just think this is. Julie did a great job with this question. It's what is the biggest lie we tell ourselves about greatness and how do we pass that lie down to our kids?

[Brian Johnson]

Yeah, that's a great, great question. Your prep was just unbelievable and your team is just so extraordinary to celebrate them.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And by the way, it's because they Believe in the mission, you can feel it.

[Brian Johnson]

And you demonstrate to you briefly the commitment to the mission and commitment to excellence and execution and even just talking to, I forget his name, Matt. Matt awesome before just how committed they are to doing things with excellence. And this is what's so inspiring for me. I think that the biggest lie, perhaps tied for first that we tell ourselves is greatness is for someone other than me combined with tied for first greatness is the fame, the wealth, the hotness. Not in my mind. And again, nothing wrong with those things. Those are great tools that one can use. Influence, power, wealth. Again, even your physical appearance can be used for something bigger than yourself. But greatness of the soul is what I believe is what we're after. But oftentimes I think people look outside of themselves and say, yeah, yeah, that makes sense for them. It makes sense for me. It makes sense for you if they're looking at us as kind of people other than them. And Maslow again, Maslow taught in a university forever, right? And he would ask his students in 1950s, he would say, hey, which of you 19, 20 year olds, which of you is going to be great? And the kids would sit there in kind of a stupor, you know, silent stupor, and just kind of look at him and he's like, if not you, then who? You know, and then to go hillel on it, if not now, then when, if what's going on in the world Again, all the things aside, like, we live in very, very challenging times. We have for 2500 years, but punctuated. We need heroes today more than ever before. And we need each of us to step up and be our best selves. So I think that's the biggest obstacle is we see it outside of ourselves rather than embodying our own. We also think it needs to look a certain way, you know, so to have the wisdom and the courage to be you and to be the best version of you. No one else can be your children's mother, my kid's father, like these, these roles that are often diminished and the trades that you've made as a mom to show up as powerfully as you have. Like, no one, no one's thinking about what you did last night, you know, and what my wife has done for countless years as well. And so redefining what it means to be great and to be heroic is a big part of my life's work. And then it's, you are the hero we've been waiting for. You know, we need you to step up and show up and be your best self and conquer that fear, conquer that laziness, and enjoy, you know, this precious life that we have and give us all you got.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Brian Johnson, you are extraordinary and so grateful to spend this time with you. What is it that you are hoping to do? How many people are you hoping to make heroic?

[Brian Johnson]

Well, I feel so blessed to be here with you. We just. Look at my tattoos. I'm like a football player.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I love it.

[Brian Johnson]

Like, tattoos there, you know, you got, like, the little thing you feel.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I mean, they're fully.

[Brian Johnson]

But you see, I love you. We got that in common, too. My playbook is on my arm, right? So how do we help people show up as the best, most heroic version of themselves? Well, they live with arete. But then my life's mission, I was inspired by Martin Seligman. When he founded the positive psychology movement in the year 2000, a friend of mine asked him, hey, what's our moonshot goal? James Pawlowski, wonderful human being. And Marty kind of scoffed at it. He's an academic scholar. He's like, moonshot goal, you know, Next morning, apparently, he comes back and he says, here's the moonshot goal. We are going to help create a world through our scientific research in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051. I heard that a decade ago, and I'm like, crazy. I still think it's crazy, but I've tattooed my body with that. So our mission, and we're not, you know, we don't believe that we will personally necessarily impact 51% of humanity via heroic public benefit cooperation. But we want to be part of the mission with you and others who are so committed to helping people be their best selves, to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051. So every morning I look down on my arm and I'm like, hero. I see a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051, starting with us. So my joke is, science says if you write down your goals, you increase the odds of success by over 40%. Most people write them down on a post it, put it on their bathroom mirror. I put it here. I'm hoping.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

What does science say about tattooing it on your.

[Brian Johnson]

I know. It's actually.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Tattoos are huge.

[Brian Johnson]

Primes are big. You know, make that imprint. But we'll see.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I have no doubt. You also have an amazing book, Arete, and people can get that. They can purchase it. Where can they get it? Amazon, Everywhere. Yes, it's beautifully done, by the way.

[Brian Johnson]

Thank you.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Also has a bookmark in it. I love those. It allows you to put it in there without damaging the page and reread it and really reflect. And really, you have done such a tremendous job. Thank you.

[Brian Johnson]

I appreciate you. I admire you so much. I'm so inspired by you. And as I've said, you are my go to. So bless you. Let's go for all your hard work.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Get it done. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show. If you're ready to stop relying on motivation and start using science to change your behavior, everything you need is in this conversation. Subscribe, share, and step into the protocol your future self will thank you for.