OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time

Your 10th cranial nerve starts at the base of your brain and then cruises down to your heart and thru your lungs and down into your gut. It kinda wanders. Which is why it’s called the vagus nerve—which, in Latin, literally means “wanderer.” (It shares a root with words like vagabond.) Why are we talking about your vagal tone? Because it plays a REALLY important role in regulating our parasympathetic nervous system.

In our last +1, we took a quick trip to our garage to recapture a potentially lost micro-moment as Eleanor and I filled up our water jug. (Little by little, drop by drop, btw!) Today we’re going to stay in the neighborhood and visit the Johnson house on a Sunday when we’re reinstituting our Digital Sabbath. Super simple. On Sundays the Wi-Fi stays off. Computers stay off. Phones off. iPods off. Enter: Tech-free restorative bliss.

Before we bid farewell to George Leonard, how about ONE more little idea from the Aikido (and life) master? This might be the most important Idea from his work we discuss, so sit up straight. (I just did as I typed this.) Here we go…

​​Technology is, obviously, awesome. We’ve been using “tech” tools for 2.5 million years since our protohuman ancestors first picked up a stone and used it as a tool. 1.8 million years ago, “we” figured out how to make an acheulean hand axe which was a pretty epic innovation at the time.

Since our time with George Leonard exploring his ideas on Mastery, I’ve been thinking about him a lot. I realized that I forgot to share another one of my favorite Ideas from his great little book that has most changed my life. It’s super simple but equally powerful.

I live in a tiny little town in Southern California called Ojai. Our town is in a valley and every morning I do my sunrise hike/trail run in the mountains that overlook the valley. One of my absolute favorite things is to be above the town on the rare days when I can look down to see clouds of fog kinda sitting on the town below.

Breathing. It’s easy to take for granted but when you stop to think about it, it quickly becomes obvious just how powerful it is. Get this: You can live for weeks without food and days without water but, of course, only minutes without oxygen.

In our last +1, we spent some time with Edward Slingerland who helped us wrap our brains around the Chinese concepts of wu-wei and de. Our target: Effortlessly expressing the best version of ourselves, and, in the process, shining with radiant, virtuous, charismatic power.

I hope you enjoyed our time with Confucius.  Today we’re going to invite a modern philosopher-neuroscientist named Edward Slingerland to the party to help us understand more about Chinese philosophy.

Confucius is back for a little more wisdom. Today he’s going to teach us about how to make progress.