How to Train Your Mind: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and the Mindset of Excellence | Brian Johnson
The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
4.6 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
What if your biggest challenge isn’t motivation but missing structure? In this episode, I sit down with Brian Johnson to unpack the science and philosophy of lasting behavior change. We explore the power of ancient wisdom, stoicism, and the neuroscience of excellence, and why most wellness apps fail to deliver real transformation.
Brian shares his personal journey from startup success to creating a global movement around character, discipline, and identity-based habits. We talk about the science of anti-fragility, how muscle mirrors virtue, and why the gap between who you are and who you could be is the true source of suffering. Whether you're a high performer or someone who wants to stop breaking promises to yourself, this conversation will help you build the structure to show up as your best—no matter the circumstance.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why most behavior change fails—and what the science says works
- The philosophy of Areté: how to close the gap between potential and action
- How ancient stoicism aligns with modern recovery, resilience, and muscle
- Why building muscle is a metaphor (and mechanism) for building character
- The true definition of anti-fragility—and how to train it
If you're ready to bridge the gap between knowing and doing, this episode is the roadmap you've been looking for.
Who is Brian Johnson?
Brian Johnson has spent half of the last 25 years as a Founder/CEO and the other half as a Philosopher. As a Founder/CEO, he’s made crowdfunding history and built and sold two market-leading social platforms. As a Philosopher, he created Philosopher’s Notes, wrote the bestselling book Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential, and developed a protocol integrating ancient wisdom, modern science, and practical tools that has been scientifically proven to help people change their lives. Brian is featured in the documentary Finding Joe on the modern Hero’s Journey and has trained some of the world’s most elite performers. He lives in the country outside of Austin with his wife and two kids and is all in on fulfilling Heroic’s mission to help create a more noble and virtuous world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051.
This episode is brought to you by:
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Find Brian Johnson at:
- Learn more about Brian Johnson and Heroic and get some free content just for my listeners: heroic.us/drlyon
- Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@heroicbrian
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heroicbrian/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heroicbrian/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heroicbrian/ YouTube:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Dr. Gabriel Lyon and today I'm bringing you a conversation that fuses ancient philosophy |
| 0:05.6 | with cutting edge behavioral science. Brian Johnson is the founder of Heroic, a public benefit corporation |
| 0:14.0 | backed by over 2,500 investors. He's trained over 10,000 coaches, create a science-backed protocol, and built one of the most |
| 0:24.6 | ambitious systems for character change on the planet. |
| 0:29.5 | We talk about the real science of behavior change, why habits don't stick, why most wellness |
| 0:34.9 | apps fail, and what the data says about building a life worth living. |
| 0:40.3 | But we also talk about what happens when you don't feel heroic when you fail, when you're |
| 0:47.5 | tired, when you want to quit. So what if the problem isn't your lack of motivation? What if the real |
| 0:54.1 | issue is that no one ever gave you the science or the structure to actually |
| 0:59.9 | change? |
| 1:00.9 | This is the episode, you show your future self what you're ready for. |
| 1:08.9 | Brian Johnson, founder of Hero, welcome to the show. |
| 1:14.4 | Dr. Gabrielle Ryan, great to be here with you. |
| 1:16.7 | I want to tell you a story. Now, you are an unusual guest for the podcast. The podcast is |
| 1:22.8 | typically a health and wellness podcast and medicine, but I would say that at the root of all of those |
| 1:30.7 | things is an ability to think and live well. And there is no other expert that I have watched |
| 1:38.1 | for over, I don't know, 15 years, which is wild, do it better. |
| 1:44.8 | And I'm going to share with you when I first found you. |
| 1:47.7 | So we have a little, it's kind of a funny little story because my dad is here visiting from |
| 1:52.8 | Ecuador. |
| 1:54.0 | He was so excited to meet you. |
| 1:56.0 | I mean, I have been hearing about you almost every day. |
... |
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