OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time

Not too long ago, we spent some time making our beds with Admiral William McRaven. Immediately after I finished his great little book called Make Your Bed, I ordered his memoir called Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations. It’s fantastic.

This morning I was preparing to film a Mastery Series session for our Optimize Coach certification program. We have 7 core fundies: Eating, Moving, Sleeping, Breathing, Focusing, Celebrating and Prospering. Today I was prepping for Sleep.

In our last +1, we talked about my chigger-triggers (hah and yeehah!) and how to alchemize life’s inevitable “inconveniences” into Pearl Bites. Right after finishing that one I thought about Kelly McGonigal’s wisdom on climbing Everest and the inevitable cold, crazy nights an explorer encounters when going for that summit.

In our last +1, we talked about the neuroscience of Trail making. Or, at least… We explored my thoughts on the parallels between the way our brain rewires itself as I joyfully weed whacked a little Trail out here in the country.

A couple +1s ago we spent some time pulling some weeds together as we created some new habits. How? By STARTING SMALL and MAKING IT EASY!

In our last +1, we talked about me and the weed. Strangely, I now LOVE weeds. And, I love pulling them out. In addition to that squirt of celebratory dopamine, there’s something about having my hands in the dirt that’s magical—as all you gardeners/ranchers/etc have known for much longer than I have!

I know we’ve been talking about the details of changing our Behavior quite a bit and I thought we were ready to move on. Then… I pulled out a weed while taking a little break this morning and realized I should share that story as well. So…

In our last +1, we talked about some parallel wisdom from BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits and Alex Korb’s The Upward Spiral. Quick repetition time… BJ says: “Prompts are the invisible drivers of our lives.” And: “No behavior happens without a prompt.”

Right after reading BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits, I read a fantastic book called The Upward Spiral by Alex Korb. It’s all about “Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time.”

Wrapping up our tour through BJ Fogg’s brilliant mind and equally brilliant book Tiny Habits, Today we’re going to talk about something he calls “Pearl Habits.”