To activate your Heroic potential.
With Basic Training in Heroic OS and the Mastery Series behind the Heroic Coach certification, Brian Johnson integrates ancient wisdom, modern science, and practical tools into seven objectives. His book Areté is 451 ideas organized around them.
How are we going to activate your Heroic potential?
Brian has spent half of the last 25 years as a founder and CEO and the other half as a philosopher. As a philosopher and teacher he has helped millions of people and built a protocol that has been scientifically shown to change lives. The seven objectives below are how we frame that protocol when we train Heroes in Heroic OS and Coaches going through certification. They build on each other, in order.
I to VII.
In Brian's words, adapted from Areté.
Know the Ultimate Game
Step backThe first thing is to make sure we're playing the right game. Ask Aristotle, standing in for ancient wisdom, and Martin Seligman, standing in for modern science, about the ultimate meaning of life, and they give the exact same one-word answer. By the end of Objective I you know the game you want to be playing and how to play it well.
Forge Antifragile Confidence
Intense trustConfidence literally means intense trust. Not that everything will go well, but that it doesn't matter how things go, because you have what it takes to deal with whatever arises. You build it the way you build trust in any relationship: you do what you say you'll do. So we help you write a protocol, and one new rule for your life: the worse you feel, the more committed you are to it. Your highs get higher and your lows get higher.
Optimize the Big 3
Energy, Work, LoveFreud said a good life comes down to two things: Work and Love. Add Energy, because if your energy is low from poor lifestyle choices you will have a hard time showing up in either. So we work on all three: more energized than you've ever been, so you can do higher-quality work and be more connected to the people you love. That is how we simplify self-development.
Make Today a Masterpiece
Theory to practice to masteryToday's the day. We start with your AM and PM bookends and the fact that a great day begins with the end of the day before it. Then the small behavioral changes that can change your life overnight, installed so you show up in your Energy, your Work, and your Love all day, every day.
Master Yourself
Three disciplinesStructural discipline, reactive discipline, and expansive discipline, plus the science of behavior change, so you can install and delete habits at will. The one thing to know: use your willpower wisely to install habits that run on autopilot. Ask yourself what's the one thing you know you could be doing that, if you started today, would most change your life. Imagine your life with that habit installed, and your number one bad habit deleted.
Dominate the Fundamentals
Seven of themEating, Moving, Sleeping, Breathing, Focusing, Celebrating, and Prospering. Each one has a core set of behaviors we train together. If you want to see how tall a building is going to be, look at how deeply they're digging the foundation. Greatness is consistency on the fundamentals, and by this point most people find they can change behaviors they've struggled with for years.
Activate Your Superpower
Soul ForceBrian calls it Soul Force. Gandhi named it. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of it in his I Have a Dream speech. It's the force that changes the world, the one thing all of your heroes have in common, and the one thing you have in common with them. When you get your Energy focused on what's important now, consistently, you activate your Heroic potential.
Heroic OS, the Mastery Series, and Areté
Basic Training in Heroic OS takes you through all seven in ten hours. The Mastery Series is the foundation of the 300-day Heroic Coach program, which has trained over 10,000 people from 100+ countries. Areté puts 451 ideas behind them in a book you can read in a sitting a day.
See the programs01 Is this the same as the eight facets on the Model page?
No. The eight facets are the picture and the measurement: eight statements you rate 1 to 10, before and after. The 7 Objectives are the practice. Every Heroic program teaches the Objectives and measures on the facets.
02 Do I have to take them in order?
The programs teach them in order because each one sets up the next: know the game, learn how to play it, simplify, make today the day, master yourself, dominate the fundamentals, then activate Soul Force. The daily practice in Heroic OS uses all seven at once.
03 Who wrote them?
Brian Johnson, Heroic's founder. Twenty years of reading the best books on living well, a Philosopher's Note on each, and a company whose mission is a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051. Areté is where he lays the seven out in full.
04 Which program should I start with?
Heroic OS+ comes with Basic Training, which teaches all seven in ten hours. If you want to go deeper after that, the Mastery Series.